


Hypnopompia

by FourGunLily



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Action, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. References, Brainwashing, Drama, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Inhumans (Marvel), Mutants in the MCU, Past Brainwashing, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Potential Canon Divergence For Events In Civil War, Really there's barely any romance at all, Slow Burn, Trust Issues, Undercover, What about all those other experiments Hydra had?, gifted
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-05 22:21:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5392409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FourGunLily/pseuds/FourGunLily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What do you want me to call you?"</p><p>After the events of Winter Soldier, the man once known as Bucky Barnes finds himself bleeding out in a back alley, confused and unsure of who he truly is. Luckily (or un-luckily), he is picked up by a woman who says she is part of an underground railroad for people that are 'Gifted'- anyone that wants to start a new life, a safe life. Through the connections he makes with the railroad, and the people he helps, the man once known as Bucky Barnes comes a few steps closer to coming to terms with everything that happened- and a few steps closer to what is yet to come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Strike

The Tap House on 38th played quiet rock music until two in the morning, served cheaper drinks than anywhere else in a ten block radius, and the regular bartender on Tuesdays didn’t ask questions. Mike was a popular bartender in his own right, smart enough to know how to make conversation and clever enough to know when to leave well enough alone. He served drinks fast, smiled when was required, and usually went home with a couple extra bucks in his pocket.

The woman with the long dark braid was always there on Tuesday nights, from sometime around eight and right up until close. She always ordered the same drink—gin and sprite, ice, slice of lemon. She rarely ate at the bar, instead enjoying somewhere between two and six drinks, depending on how many people came to see her, but tipped well enough that he didn’t really mind her presence. It wasn’t like she took up much space, or much time- honestly, he usually forgot all about her even being there until she raised her empty glass, a silent request for another.

He had never caught her name, and honestly, he didn’t really care enough to ask. One of her friends though—one of the ladies who visited her more often than not, she was closer to his type. Gabbie—that was her name – was cute enough that he found himself wondering if he should make a move, ask for her number, but every time he thought about doing it, he found his Tuesday night regular looking at him out of the corner of his eye, and he promptly just… wouldn’t.

Miss Tuesday had long braided black hair to Gabbie’s short blonde pixie cut, a long, strong nose to the cute upturned one that Gabbie sported. She constantly looked slightly annoyed, as if the idea of even having to socialize with any of the other regulars was distasteful, but Gabbie always smiled up at him when he brought the two of them their drinks. Miss Tuesday looked so disinterested, so displeased with his presence, that he never really pushed to get to know her better, and apparently his poor service was good enough for her to keep showing up. Every Tuesday night she was there, holding her odd meetings with people that were much more interesting and friendly than she herself was.

Mike didn’t really get it, but then again, he didn’t really care.

-

“He’s looking over here again,” Gabbie whispered behind the back of her hand, leaning towards her co-conspirator, who snorted indelicately into her glass. She looked at the other woman, scrunching her nose at the sound. “Really, just because I’m not an absolute ass-“

“Maybe you should stop smiling at him every time he brings you a drink,” The other woman spoke dryly, setting her drink down between the two of them.

“I’m just being polite,” Gabbie hissed. “He’s got it shitty enough as it is. You don’t need to act like a dick around him.”

The dark-haired woman waved her hand between them, as if dusting away the comment. “He’s fine,” She said airily, and cleared her throat as if to put the issue to rest. “Anyway. You were telling me about Flicker.”

“Oh,” Gabbie glanced off to the side, back to where the bartender was wiping down the bar, getting ready to pack up for the night. Satisfied that he was either unable or unwilling to listen in on their conversation, she turned back to the other woman. “Long story short, he’s fine. We sent him off to go help some others over in Washington—a little high profile, maybe, but he’s happy.”

The dark haired woman sighed and looked down, into her drink. Most of the gin and sprite was gone, leaving little but half-melted ice cubes and water that vaguely tasted like pine. “Things are starting to get crazy out there,” She murmured, mostly to herself. She looked up at Gabbie, at the question in her eyes, and cleared her throat again. “After the Incident, well, things aren’t as easy to work around anymore.”

“But there’s so many more people out there.” For a half-second, Gabbie’s nonchalant expression fell, and something like anger touched her green eyes. “Too many people who got kidnapped, experimented on, made to be this way when they didn’t want, or were born with talents they can’t control—“

“You’re preaching to the choir, Gab,” She reached out and put her hand on the smaller woman’s arm, and Gabbie fell silent as she continued. “We’ll do all we can. Every person we save, or we give a new home to, is one more out of their claws.”

Gabbie was quiet, thinking for a long moment, long enough that she looked back over at the bartender again. 

The braided woman closed her eyes for a moment, sifting through thoughts—hers and his, and carefully plucked out anything dangerous from his memory, anything that might put the two of them—or him—in danger. Then, she pulled a twenty from her wallet, folded it twice, and slipped it under her mostly empty glass. “C’mon Gab. Last call.”

“Yeah, I’m good.” Gabbie wiped the back of her hand over her blue eyes and stood up. “I should head home anyway. Boyfriend’s waiting.”

“I still don’t think that’s a good idea,” She murmured, glancing over her shoulder at Mike. “Dragging someone else into this.”

“Dave’s a good guy,” She hissed back, bristling. “Even if he isn’t one of us.”

“Yeah, yeah,” The taller woman raised one hand to Mike, a silent goodbye. If he looked longingly at Gabbie’s retreating form, well, she may have glared a little longer at him before leaving. Not that he noticed—his eyes were either entirely on the little blonde woman, or on cleaning his bar. She wasn’t about to complain. Getting his attention was her absolute last priority.

The air outside was cold enough that their breath rose in thick mist from between their lips. Winter had come early this year, and the forecast had called for a light dusting of snow. The taller woman pulled her phone out of her coat pocket, squinting at the brightness of the screen against the dark cover of night before slipping it back in- just about two in the morning. She needed to stop staying out so late. “You okay getting home?”

“Yeah, yeah. My car’s just down the block, and I only had the one drink.” Gabbie waved her off, already stepping away, towards the street corner. “You be safe too, okay?”

“I’m always safe, Gab,” She smiled then, a quick twitch of her lips that few would be able to catch, but Gabbie returned the gesture before turning away, waving one hand in the air behind her as she spun round, heading down the block.

For a few minutes, the dark-haired woman stood in front of the dim light of the bar, hands tucked firmly in the pockets of her jacket. She looked out onto the street, grey eyes half lidded with apparent disinterest as she watched cars trundle on past, slow on the streets, as if nobody was really ready to go home at two in the morning on a Tuesday night. She sighed, a great puff of white breath into the early winter air, and closed her eyes.

Reflexively, she reached out to the world around her. Unmoving, hands in her pockets, her mind broadened, pushing against the borders of other minds, other thoughts, other feelings around her. Behind her, Mike was cleaning the bar, pleased with his tip and wondering if he could get away with closing early. A car passed her, and she caught the frustration of a single mother, late getting home from her shift, heading home to a baby nearly a year old and the neighbors daughter, ten years old and babysitting for ten dollars a night and a rushed ‘thank-you’. There was someone on the payphone a half-block down, running on the last few coins in his pocket and hoping his mom would pick up, take him home, get him somewhere safe tonight.

She was snooping, and she knew that, but she couldn’t help it. It was little more than reflex to her now, to push against the world around her, to feel, to think the thoughts of a hundred thousand people. She did this every night before bed, every morning when she awoke, pushing, prodding, _learning_. Sometimes it was sweet—the joy of a new birth. Love. A kindness from a stranger. 

Tonight, it was a sharp jab of pain somewhere in the brain matter behind her right eye.

She bit back a cry of pain, more from reflex than actual injury, and clapped one hand over her eye, glancing around. She hadn’t pushed her powers too far, not any distance that should have even caused her discomfort, so it meant that someone was close by. Someone was close by, and in pain. 

She half-turned to her left, the opposite direction Gabbie had walked off in. She was long gone, already in her car, two blocks away and gaining distance. Not that she needed or wanted help, but it served the purpose to drive home the fact that she was alone. Alone except for Mike the bartender, any asshole who drove by, and whoever was in pain somewhere in a block radius around her.

Gritting her teeth, she opened up her mind again, feeling around carefully. Rather than simply letting herself feel anything, letting any thought sift through her mind, she filtered, focused, and she felt a chill go down her spine. As if possessed, controlled by something bigger than her, she finished turning, facing down the street. Her eyes closed as she took in the world around her, the beacon that pulsed just behind her right eye, and with her hand still cupped over the right side of her face, she took a step forward. Then, another. 

She kept pushing, prodding gently at the world around her. Pain, closer and closer. Under that pain, there was some kind of fear, something primal. For a moment, she was reminded of a dog, its leg broken, whimpering and afraid, and she pushed the thought away. No, this was a human. The mind was too advanced even in this state. She turned, her feet moving of her own volition, until she was facing down a back alley that ran behind the bar.

_Down here_ , the pain pushed back, and she was going to have a headache later from letting her mind fall so far open to this sort of trauma. _Further_. She pushed on, one hand in front of her, the other still pressed over her right eye, lips curled up and over gritted teeth.

If she hadn’t known exactly what she was looking for, she wouldn’t have noticed him. A dark figure, barely a smudge of shadow behind the garbage bin, piled in among the bags of trash behind the back of the bar. Human, she confirmed, male, she guessed, curled up against the world as if to protect themselves. Unconscious, she presumed. 

She wrinkled her nose. The back alley smelled like a grease pit out behind a fast food joint, like the rotting liquid found at the bottom of a garbage bag. She stepped forward, leaning over the curled up figure, and slowly, purposefully, dropped to her haunches until she was nearly on the same level as them.

Male. She could see the dark scruff of a half-grown beard over his chin and neck, but the rest of his face was covered with long dark hair, matted from a night spent out in the trash. His leather jacket was torn in a few places- smooth, clean cuts caused by some sort of knife or sharp blade. The clothes beneath were stained a brownish-red—blood, and lots of it, enough that this man needed to get to the ER (or something like it), and fast.

She sucked in a quick breath and reached out with one hand, and as she moved to push the hair out of his eyes, something quick flashed through her mind, like a glint of life flickering off of the edge of a knife.

She lunged back, rolling back on the balls of her feet, but he was faster. Like quicksilver, like lightning, he reached out and balled one hand in the front of her jacket and dragged her back down to him, until she was barely a half breath away from him. The whites of his eyes were too-bright against the color of his dirt-smudged skin, and full with a terrible clarity she hadn’t expected. All the while, the space behind her right eye was pulsing with pain, like a warning signal. She froze, unmoving, her hands up and open in the space to her sides. _I’m not a threat_ , she tried to send, but his mind was utterly unresponsive.

“Who sent you?” He growled, his words almost undecipherable. His voice was gritty, as if he hadn’t spoken in days, as if he had gone a week without a drink.

She swallowed out of reflex. “Come again?” She asked, trying to keep her voice even.

“Who,” He pulled her closer, and they would have bumped noses if his grip wasn’t steady enough to keep her from falling forward. “Sent. _You_?”

A flicker of red played across the expanse of her mind, a red sigil of tentacles and terror from her distant youth, and suddenly everything made more sense than she wanted it to. “Jesus Christ, _nobody_ sent me,” She hissed, trying to sound like she wasn’t scared. “I just-“ What? What did she want? Why did she go skulking down a back alley, searching for something that was none of her business? The red mark burned like a brand, brightly in her mind’s eye, and she swallowed. “I just want to help.”

“To help?” He sneered, his lip curling. His breath smelled stale, like bile, like an empty stomach. She wondered at the last time he had eaten. “People don’t-“

“People _do_ ,” She pushed again, feeling around at the edges of his mind, and found an indomitable will. Sure, maybe if she had a few hours to chip around, find his weaknesses, but she didn’t have a few hours. Something had happened to him, and that something had made him push back against her powers, even subconsciously. “You’re in pain. You could be dying. Either you spend your last goddamn hours back here with the trash, or you _let me help you_.”

He was silent for a long moment, unblinking, and she wasn’t sure if he quite understood her. When he didn’t say anything for an entire minute, just _staring_ , she tried once more. “My apartment’s just two blocks down. I won’t ask any questions.”

That seemed to do it. He finally blinked, and she felt just a fraction of his mental defenses slip. Apparently he was only human after all. “No questions,” He grunted, and she nodded.

“No questions.”

“My arm is broken.” He said it as if he was stating the weather. She wouldn’t have known if he wasn’t covered in blood and radiating pain. “I’ve been stabbed—“ He paused, and she wondered if that was what counted as a wince. “Four times. Could be some internal damage, but it will heal.”

“Okay,” She spoke as she exhaled, nodding. “Can you let go of my jacket?”

Another quick blink, and he released her. She nearly stumbled as she righted herself, trying not to fall on him and hurt him further than he already was. “Alright,” She bit her lip and wished she had driven the two blocks to the bar instead. “Can you stand?”

He nodded instantly, a quick, jerky movement, and suddenly he was up, pushing back against the brick wall behind him, and she hadn’t been expecting him to be taller than she was. _How the hell did someone like this get fucked up this bad?_ She thought wildly, and then he staggered heavily to the side, and it was all she could to get under his arm and hold him up—barely.

She didn’t realize until she had slung his arm over her shoulders that the entire appendage was either coated in or made _entirely_ of some sort of steel, cold and unrelenting even through the layers of his clothes, and no wonder he had been able to hold her up with just the single limb. A name played through the back of her mind- no, more of a title, really, and she swallowed back her fear. She had gone looking for a lost lamb and had found a tiger, wounded even as he was. She looked back at him, and the face under the dark bangs, the dirt and the blood, was the face out of her childhood nightmares.

However, the face that looked back at her, the mind that was pressing against the space behind her right eye, that face was human. That face was human, and it was _scared_ , scared like a hurt animal, and she gritted her teeth. “Alright, bud,” She wrapped her hand around his waist and dug her fingers into the waistband of whatever remained of his jeans, and hoisted him a little higher against her. “Let’s get you home.”

-

Getting him down two blocks of back alleys took nearly an entire hour, and getting him through the back door of her apartment building and up the two sets of stairs left a blood smear across the railing that went for almost an entire flight. However, sometime around four in the morning, she pushed the front door of her apartment open and the half-dead man from the garbage collapsed onto her floor with little ado.

“Alright, alright, alright,” She spoke under her breath, more to herself than to the man blacked out on the floor. “What the fuck do I do?” She looked up, to the phone sitting in its dock on her counter—standard procedure if she found a Gifted, or an experiment, was to call Gabbie and the others, let them know what sort of powers had been brought into the fold so they could prepare if it was a spy, but this was a whole other level. She raked a hand through her hair before quickly deciding against it, slinging her coat off and over the door handle before stepping over his body and walking over to the bathroom.

Bath. She should run a bath, get him cleaned up and out of those clothes so she could actually see what she was working with. What she had to sew, or set, or whatever- then again, if he really was the (possibly former) hitman of Hydra itself, didn’t he have some sort of healing capabilities? Wasn’t he superhuman? Maybe she didn’t have to do too much to get him off of death’s door. He had said something in the alley about the internal injuries taking care of themselves, and she had ignored it then, but maybe.

The water was running, the steam lazily rising when she turned back and tried to rouse the half-dead man on her floor. After nudging him gently with the side of her shoe, she pressed her mind to his to try and find out what was happening. She found him to be utterly unconscious, nothing but a sea of mental blackness, and that was when she started worrying.

“Okay, let’s get you to the bathroom,” She murmured, curling her arms underneath his pits and trying to pull him up. “I’d kill for super strength right now,” She hissed as she pushed him up to a sitting position, then pulled, dragging him slowly down the twenty feet of linoleum to her bathroom.

By the time she managed to lean him up against the tub, it was full, and she turned it off with a deep, world-weary sigh. _Next. Clothes_. She glanced around until her eyes landed on a pair of scissors discarded by her sink.

The coat had to be cut off of him. It was half in tatters already, slashed open in more places than she could easily count, and punctures in four places around his ribs. The sweatshirt underneath was even worse, plastered to his body with little more than sweat and dried blood. His right forearm was bent at an odd angle—nothing she hadn’t seen before, and not bad enough to break the skin, but the bones beneath were clearly misshapen. His left arm gleamed in the yellowed light of the bathroom, dull under the dirt and grime, the red star on his shoulder chipped and faded. She made a point to not look at it for too long, swallowing nervously as she turned away. Off came the boots- those took the least effort out of everything else, thunking on the lino behind her loudly enough to make her jump.

“Where-?”

She jumped again, nearly out of her skin, turning back to him as he raised his head, movement groggy. No longer the swift, quick movements of the killer in the alley, the man in front of her looked like he had woken up after a week long bender. He looked up at her, and blinked long and slow, waiting for a response.

“My apartment.” She wondered if he remembered her, and a quick peek inside his mind showed that he had at least a foggy recollection of their ‘meeting’. “You need to get cleaned up.”

He looked down at himself, as if he just remembered where he was, and nodded, looping his thumbs into his belt loops. In two, quick jerky movements, he shucked them off of his hips, grunting from the exertion, and she eyed the puncture marks over his ribs. He had to have some sort of healing factor for them not to pop open, but she wasn’t going to mention it. She didn’t want him bleeding all over her floor if it could be helped. She leaned down in front of him, pulling on the fabric around his ankles, until the Winter Soldier sat, naked and covered in dried blood and grime, on her bathroom floor.

What luck.

“Tub,” She grunted out, nodding towards the piece of furniture that was holding him up. He let out a quick exhale, as if trying to steel himself for the movement, and reached up behind him with his steel arm, bracing himself against the edge of the tub in the same way he had pushed off of the alley wall behind the bar not two hours ago. His feet slipped on the floor with the movement, and he yelped like a kicked dog as he went down, his knees buckling underneath him, and she wondered how she had been scared of him before this.

Then again, she wondered how he was even still alive.

She bowed her head under his arm again, squatting and using her shoulders to push him up, taking his steel arm across her back, and he leaned heavily enough on her that her knees almost buckled. It was little more than sheer willpower that got him half standing, and eventually into the tub without slipping and killing himself, sloshing already grey water out and onto the floor.

He sagged into the tub with the relief of a man who hadn’t had a bath in a hundred years, his head nearly dipping under the water until he came back up with a snarl, his broken arm bumping against the side. She shot up, but he was already pressing it against the side of the tub, just under the water until it _cracked_ with a sound loud enough to churn her stomach, and he looked up at her through greasy bangs. “Set it.” He grunted, and it almost sounded like it had a _please_ on the end.

Thankfully, her first aid kit had enough to hold it together. A few rolls of bandages and a makeshift brace later, and he was dangling his forearm out of the side of the tub and trying to clean himself. Instead of asking, she rolled up her sleeves and slid her hands under the water, already draining away the water that had grown a dull pink-brown, refilling the tub as he tried to not drown.

She had to drain and refill the tub three times, until she was almost entirely out of hot water and he was nearly shivering, but between the two of them she had managed to pour enough water and shampoo over his hair to properly clean it, and now that he had his hair out of his eyes she felt a chill go down her spine.

She had seen him once before, back at the base in her youth, in the cryo pod, unconscious and yet he had still somehow scared the shit out of her even then. Yet, now here she was, trying to keep him alive. She looked away, back into the tub, and then over her shoulder. “Alright, this is the best we’re getting right now. How are your wounds?”

“Fine,” He grunted, and she couldn’t help but roll her eyes.

“Sure,” She nodded, leaning behind her and pulling a towel off of the crowded rack behind her. “Get it drained. I’m still going to bandage you up, even if you’re halfway healed already.”

He complied wordlessly, pulling the plug with a sullen expression that somehow didn’t fit the rest of him, and she almost _laughed_. She was going crazy, she decided, and tried to distract herself by towelling his hair off, and as the tub drained, leaving him to cover himself up and salvage any dignity he cared about.

He almost blacked out again when she dragged him to her bedroom, collapsing onto her bed with enough force to knock the air out of his lungs, but she didn’t need him to be awake to bandage him. Half an hour or so of antiseptic, bandages, and quiet cursing later, and his torso was covered in neat rows of white bandages, and she took care to rewrap his forearm now that he wasn’t moving. The sun was coming up by the time she was done, wiping the back of her hand over her forehead with a quiet sigh; She would end up sleeping on the couch, she decided. She had slept on far worse. She threw her blanket over him without a second thought, but when she turned to leave, she felt a set of ice-cold steel fingers wrap around her wrist, and she glanced back down to find him awake, looking up at her from the bed with wide, expressionless eyes. 

“Who are you?” He asked, and his voice was gravelly. She faintly remembered that she should have fed him, or gotten him to drink some water—he still sounded like he had been chewing sand.

Her mind flitted over a thousand names, aliases, identities, and she formed a tight smile. “Strike,” She murmured, then cleared her throat as she spoke again, repeating herself. “You can call me Strike.”

He blinked. She wondered what he meant when he did that. “Strike,” He repeated, his voice distant and dry.

“What—“ She pursed her lips, and rethought her question. “What do you want me to call you?”

There it was. She presented him with an out- she knew him as the Winter Soldier. The Hydra boogeyman. The crack of a rifle in the distance, the wet spray of blood. He swallowed, his throat working over words he didn’t say for a long time, and eventually his mouth opened. 

“James.” He winced, as if the name hurt him to say. He didn’t say anything else- no last name. No nickname. No old alias. No rank and file, no boogeyman callsign. Just James.

“Okay, James,” Strike took a deep breath and nodded. “I’ll be outside. I’ll check on you in a few hours.”

He might have nodded, but if he did the motion was too small, too slight for her to notice. His eyes closed, and his hand dropped to the bed beside him, as if the weight of the unnatural arm was too much for him to bear in that moment.

James. Strike turned away and flicked the light off, covering the room in darkness.

Just James.


	2. James

He awoke in stages, slowly pulling himself from the cover of sleep and into full consciousness. Unmoving, eyes still closed to the slowly brightening room around him, he slowly worked his way down the length of his body, twitching muscles to take stock of the damage done to him the night previous.

He was sore all over. An ache, deep in his bones, from bruises and scrapes—but it was dulled, enough for him to push past, to ignore. His right forearm was nearly healed—he could move the fingers on his flesh hand easily enough, even if it sent a numbing tingle up his arm when he tried. The four puncture points across his chest burned when he moved, but he was sure they were fully closed, and had no chance of reopening. His mouth was dry, parched enough that when he parted his lips, the breath he took in hissed through his throat like wind through a cracked window.

When he was sure that he could fight if he needed to, he opened his eyes.

He was laid out over a bed, a blue blanket thrown over his legs and chest. He was entirely naked, his clothes cut from him the night prior- _a hot bath. Water over his head, soap in his eyes_ \- he wiped the back of his hand over his eyes to clean the foggy memory away and pushed against the headboard, sitting up on the bed. 

The room was clean, if not a little bare. A bed, a dresser, one drawer half-open and stuffed to the brim with wrinkled clothes. A shelf of books in the far corner, spines neatly sorted. Lived-in, but not sloppy. As he swung his legs over the side of the bed, he bumped the nightstand beside him, and the tall glass of water sloshed half of its contents out and over the side. He looked down at it, blinking, hesitating—the sides of the glass were dotted with small bubbles; it had been sitting for a while—but he was all too aware of how dry the inside of his mouth was. He picked it up and drank it in three gulps, squeezing his eyes shut at the strain in his throat.

The door in front of him was closed. He set the glass down quietly when his thirst was quenched, and cast his gaze around until he noticed a pair of grey sweatpants, rolled into a bundle and resting on the edge of the bed.

With a little more effort than normal, he unrolled them and pulled them on- a little loose, but he pulled the drawstring up around his hips and stood. He would feel more comfortable in more clothes, or body armor, or really _anything_ else, but at least he would be able to make a run for it if he needed to. Pressing his lips together, he wrapped his fingers around the door handle, twisted, and pulled it open.

The smell hit him like a freight train. Cooking meat and sugars and butter, browning in a pan. He nearly staggered, leaning heavily against the door as he glanced wildly around- Out into the living room, lined with couches and shelves. To his right was the kitchen, and in that kitchen stood a woman, a woman with a thick braid of black hair roped most of the way down her spine. A single twine of blue string was braided in, twined through her hair, bright against the black.

She looked up at him with calm in her grey eyes, and she raised the spatula she was holding, as if in greeting, a flat expression on her face. “Morning,” She said, before lowering the spatula and flipping a fried egg over, turning back to the pan. “I was wondering when you were going to get up. Still thirsty?”

He didn’t answer, simply looking back behind him to the glass he had left on the nightstand. He licked his lips out of reflex, and swallowed. 

“Come and sit down,” She said, and when he looked back at her, she motioned with the spatula towards a small table, seated for two. “I’ll get you another drink and some food. You’ve gotta be starving.”

His throat worked, still dry, sore from disuse. “Why?” He croaked, watching her with wary eyes as she dished the fried egg out of the pan and onto the plate beside her.  
She didn’t even look at him. He watched her in silence as she worked, the long braid of dark hair swaying lightly as she moved back to the stove. She seemed utterly unperturbed by his presence, a half-dead man dug out of a back alley. It set his teeth on edge. He waited in silence, and after she had finished filling the plate she was working on, she tossed the spatula into the sink and finally turned to face him.

“Because you needed help,” She said, folding her arms across her chest, across the plain white t-shirt she wore. “Because I told myself, once, that if someone was in trouble, that I would help them.”

“Nobody—“ He took a deep breath, a distant memory flickering across his vision. _Somebody_ —“I could have killed you,” He said quietly.

His recollection of the night before was coming back in small, bloody pieces. Someone had recognized him as the Winter Soldier, someone who had worked for Hydra, and they had tried to bring him in. _Recover the Asset._ Use his programming against him. He had barely been able to push past the compulsion to listen, to stay and serve, to be put back in the freezer, and by the time he was in full control over himself, he had little else to do but go into hiding. The alley behind the bar had been a quick choice, a place he hadn’t expected anyone to go looking through until he could heal, recover and run.

He had been wrong. That itself struck a chord within him. If it had been a member of S.H.I.E.L.D., or Hydra, or anyone else—if this woman hadn’t been so colossally _stupid_ —He might be dead. Or worse.

“Yeah, well,” She shrugged, and motioned toward the table again. “You didn’t.”

With nothing else to say, he sat.

She set a glass of water in front of him, which he drank without a second thought. After that, a mug of black coffee, which burned his tongue and tasted like battery acid, but he drank that too. She slid the plate in front of him, between his elbows, and he looked down at the spread. Bacon and eggs, slices of toasted brown bread, a red apple balanced on its side- more food than he had seen in a long time, food that wasn’t either rationed out to him or stolen. She slid into the seat in front of him, hands cupped around a mug of her own coffee, lightened with either milk or cream. 

He watched her as he ate, the motions mechanical. His training, his programming had taught him to notice certain things about a potential target, but as a passing glance she seemed utterly unremarkable. She showed little expression as he ate, simply alternating between watching him in return or looking out the window to her right, letting him eat in moderate silence. She dressed plainly, wore no makeup or jewelry but for the string of blue, as if the last thing she really wanted was to be noticed. 

“How is it?” She asked quietly, her attention on the world outside.

“Good.” The word came as a reflex, and he blinked because he hadn’t really been tasting what he had put into his mouth. Food was food, and the requirements that he had regarding it would be that it would nourish him enough to continue his existence. However, the inside of his mouth tasted like… garlic and spices, and the tang of black pepper was like a flash from the past, and when he said the one word, the corner of her mouth twitched.

Strike. That’s what she had told him to call her. If it was a name, it was an unlikely one, so he would expect it to be a sort of call sign. A code name. Which meant that this unremarkable woman was more than she seemed. 

“Are you still hungry?” She asked.

“Yes.” A fact. The buttery food was sitting oddly in his stomach, unused to such rich substance, but he needed more. 

She stood and shook her head, amused, and picked up his plate to refill it. “I’m sure you’ve got a lot of questions, James.”

James. He had told her to call him that. It stung less than what he had been called previously, when he had woken up. The name left his mouth feeling as if it were coated in ash, and he took a swig of coffee to clear the unpleasant taste with another that was only marginally better.

She slid his plate back in front of him, filled once again with food, and he set himself to filling his stomach. Strike sat down across from him again, folding her hands onto the table in front of her, leaning forward. He paused in his eating for a moment and looked at her, as if waiting for her to speak, to explain.

“I’m Gifted,” She said, as if that explained everything. When he said nothing, she continued, “I work with a group of other people, like me, to help other Gifted people find new homes, or new lives, or just get them out of difficult situations.” 

“Gifted?” The word sat strangely on his tongue, as if he had heard it before, but never had it applied.

“People with talents beyond the natural human.” She lifted her coffee to her lips and took a long drink before clearing her throat and continuing. “Some of us can fly, or are supernaturally strong, or we can learn languages instantly, but we’re all different. Some people are born with it. Some people gain them through experiments, or trauma. It depends.”

“You?” He jabbed his fork at her to punctuate the question.

“I can read minds. Alter memories. Imprint thoughts, that kind of thing.”

She spoke plainly, but her flat expression sent a chill down his spine. Someone who had the power to change someone’s memories, or remove them altogether- he could feel the jolt of electricity, a not-so distant memory playing across his fingertips, over his temples. “Really.” It wasn’t a question, not really, but he growled it as he spoke.

“Yeah,” She said, setting her mug down on the table with a dull _clink_. “That’s how I found you. Thought you deserved to know.”

It made sense, the pieces clicking together in his mind. Someone wouldn’t normally be going down a back alley like that, looking through the trash unless they knew who they were looking for. It just clarified his thought that she was an absolute idiot for bringing him to her home however. If she had read his mind, if she had found out who he _was_ -

“Relax,” She waved a hand through the air between them, her motions still confined to her half of the table. “I’ve helped… people who have been under Hydra’s control before.”

“Did you just…?” He spoke slowly, quietly.

“Kind of.” She shrugged gently, lowering her hand. “I can’t read your mind yet. It’s too muddled, but I can tell the general cant of your thoughts.” She smiled then, and the expression almost looked sheepish. “Whatever they did to you made your mind resilient to control or reading. You’re a pretty big mystery, James.”

He didn’t take his eyes off of her, but he did push another piece of toast into his mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. “So,” He said, sinking his fork into another fried egg. Orange yolk pooled out and over his plate. “What now?”

“That’s up to you,” Strike leaned back in her seat, leaving her now-empty mug on the table. “I haven’t told anyone I work with about you. That information is between us.”

“How can I believe that?”

“Because they would be here already if I had,” She said evenly, but he could sense her annoyance under the surface. It brought him a small sense of pleasure. “Look, James, I’m going to be blunt with you. If you just go back out there, someone is going to find you. Someone who will try to take advantage of you.”

“I don’t do that anymore,” He spoke, but it was into his food. As if he was lying to himself. Even now, in a plain apartment, in front of a woman who had done nothing to hurt him, he was looking for escape routes. He could kill her before she tried to use her powers on him- the fork in his hand should be strong enough, sharp enough to sink into her throat. Telling himself that he _didn’t do that anymore_ felt less and less real as the days went on. 

“It’s my job to blend in, to show other people how to keep themselves beneath notice,” She continued, but her voice had softened, as if she understood. “If you want a place to stay and figure things out-“

He stood, interrupting her as he pushed his chair back. It scraped across the linoleum in protest. “I need clothes,” He said sharply, and the look she gave him would have given him a ripple of guilt through his gut if he didn’t need to _get out immediately_. It was too much- the food, the home. The clothes. She could be controlling him right now, or reading him, giving him anything his subconscious craved, and it was _too much_.

She looked up at him for a long time, until his fingers gripped into a tight fist, and then she stood, sliding her own chair back. “Alright,” She sighed. “Men’s clothes are in the top right dresser drawer in my room. Help yourself.”

He walked out of the dining room without a second thought, leaving the door open behind him. He didn’t need anything fancy- just clothes to keep him warm until he could get new ones, something more durable. He pulled a too-large sweatshirt over his head, and a second sweater on over that, grimacing as the puckered marks of once-stab-wounds pulled at the quick movements. His boots were at the foot of the bed, one piled on top of the other, and those were yanked on. He had no other possessions, no weapons, no supplies- anything he had kept after leaving Hydra had been lost in his last fight, left behind in his escape. 

He stood in the doorway of the bedroom, dressed in clothes that weren’t his, with a stomach full of food that wasn’t his, and a woman he didn’t know looked at him with pity in her grey, grey eyes.

“The offer doesn’t expire,” She said slowly, before he could take another step. “If you change your mind, I’m at that bar every Tuesday. You can find me if you have any questions.”

An old, smothered part of him knew he should thank her. Or apologise. Explain himself in some way, but he didn’t. Couldn’t. Saying that would mean facing a part of himself that he couldn’t. Not yet. He walked to the front door and yanked it open, and he shut it back behind himself without looking back.

The hallway smelled like cigarette smoke, musty and smothering. He stumbled out of the building in a haze, unaware of where he was, or when it was- the sky was bright enough for midday, and the streets were relatively empty. He should be able to scrounge up some clothes, find his way back to- to-

He didn’t know. Somewhere. Anywhere. One step at a time. He turned to his left, what felt like east to him, pushed his hands deep into his pockets, and started walking.


	3. Gab

On Wednesday, the man once known as the Winter Soldier stepped out of a shoddy apartment building located just a few blocks south of Hell's Kitchen. Winter was almost in full swing, snow falling softly from the grey sky above him, clinging to the ground for a few moments before melting away. It was colder outside, even by midday, than it had been the night prior, and he found that he was bundling closer in to himself, hunching his shoulders to appear smaller than he actually was.

He snuck into a random condo over an hour’s walk away, coming away with a pair of jeans that (mostly) fit, an undershirt he slipped into before piling the layers back on, and a pair of gloves that hid his artificial arm a little better than simply putting the offending hand in his pocket. The next condo down had nothing to help him, but the third one had a leather jacket he grabbed without a second thought. It ended up being a little snug in the shoulders, but it would fit. Pulling the collar up around his jaw and hunkering down when he walked did miracles for hiding his identity, and he found himself walking down the street in broad daylight with barely any attention offered to him.

He slept inside the archway of a clothing store in a strip mall, and managed to wake up before any of the workers arrived to shoo him away and risk recognizing him.

On Thursday, Barnes slipped mostly unnoticed into a library and spent the entire day reading archived newspaper articles on the Incident. New York was still in a state of disrepair, but most of the population had bounced back from the shock. That night, he found an old warehouse closer to the river and slept there, shivering under a roof speckled with holes. 

Friday, he realised that he hadn’t eaten since Wednesday morning. His gut clenched with hunger, he walked into a fast food joint and walked out with someone else’s meal before anyone else could notice. He ate two cheeseburgers out behind the building in large, ravenous bites before nearly choking on a handful of fries, pounding on his chest to clear his airway.

Saturday was mostly a wash. A police officer noticed him slip into someone’s back door, the old wood splintering around the lock. He had gone in looking for a computer so he didn’t have to go back to the library so soon after spending an entire day there, to keep someone from recognizing him, but he was forced to slip out of a window and into a back alley to evade capture. The rest of the afternoon was spent idly walking around, trying to get far enough away that he might not be noticed.

Sunday, Barnes woke with a prickling sensation on the back of his neck. His throat felt swollen, and he wondered if he even had the capabilities of getting sick at this point. He walked around for most of the morning with the feeling that someone was watching him, but every time he turned around, nothing. No one. He found a twenty, left in the dirty snow under a bus stop seat, and used it to buy a half bucket of chicken and a gallon of soda. The sugar woke him up the rest of the way, and he spent the majority of the evening too awake to actually get any sleep.

Monday, he found a Hydra agent.

He caught a glimpse of the man in the reflection of a mall window- Barnes had only gone to such a populated place to use the washroom, to try and clean up in one of the sinks there, but he knew the face looking back at him. _Taylor._ Martin Taylor. Some flunkie from Hydra, a man who answered to a man who answered to another man, but he _knew_ his face. He whirled, almost smacking into some teenaged girl typing something into her phone, and he saw Taylor turn away, slipping through the crowd. Gone, but easy enough to find again.

The Winter Soldier had hunted far more skilled quarry.

He waited for most of the day, ignoring the clench of hunger in his stomach, the dryness to his throat. He followed Taylor’s shadow through streets, through snow and wind, in and out of buildings. He was patient. He could wait. It was well past ten in the evening when Taylor returned to what the Winter Soldier assumed to be his home; some little hole in the wall apartment, at the top of a scrappy four-floor building. He waited outside in the snow for an hour, standing perfectly still until his body began to shiver, the scarred tissue connected to his steel arm burning from the cold, and then he _moved_.

He slunk through shadow, through dimly lit hallways, pressing his ear flat against the door to Taylor’s apartment before he gripped the handle, twisting. Locked, of course, but with the strength of his steel hand, it bent and twisted, warping in his grip with a dull screech, muffled as he pressed his body against it, and then he slipped the door open and he was in.

Taylor hadn’t even known he was coming.

The balding, middle-aged man was half naked, dressed only in an unbuttoned shirt and a pair of underwear that were some sort of middling greyish-brown. He held a paper plate in one hand, a burrito still in its plastic wrap resting almost daintily on top, the other on the handle of his- _microwave, it’s called a microwave._

His eyes widened behind his round spectacles, and the burrito rolled off the plate as it tilted in his hand—all of this happened in the span of a second, but the Asset had already moved in, the door shutting with a _bang_ behind him, fingers reaching, clenching, gripping. Taylor backed up and into the edge of the stove, his lips parting to scream, to plead, something- but he was an easy target. The Asset’s steel fingers wrapped around his throat and squeezed, relentless in their artificial strength. The sound of leaking air hissed out from around his grip, and he lifted slightly, until Taylor’s toes dangled, brushing the ground.

“Who sent you?” He growled, and when Taylor didn’t instantly respond, he slammed the man back into the stove, denting the handle with the force of it. “Who?”

“I don’t-“ The words hissed through the man’s perfectly lined teeth, parted from the strain, and the Asset dropped him onto his ass. Taylor wheezed, trying to pull air through his bruised throat, and the air rushed back out as the Asset drove the toe of his boot into his ribs.

“Start talking,” He growled, placing his foot flat on the man’s ribcage and leaning over him.

It took a few wheezing, rattling breaths for Taylor to figure out how words worked again. “Oh God, oh Jesus Christ, I wasn’t looking for you, I wasn’t, I swear-“

“ _Who_ sent you?” The Asset leaned a little further over, put a little more weight on Taylor’s ribs, and felt them start to give out under the pressure. “Start making sense, Taylor.”

“Nobody sent me, I swear it!” Thomas’ words came out as one jumbled mess, blurring into one exhale. “They didn’t tell me anything, Jesus, everyone thinks you’re _dead_!”

After a moment of consideration, the Asset shifted his weight, letting the man suck in a much-needed gasp of air before leaning back down. “State your mission.”

“Mission?” The man squeaked out.

The Asset made no move to repeat himself, simply leaning further, applying pressure until the dull, muffled _crack_ of Taylor’s ribs echoed through the room. The man tried to scream, ran out of air, and instead let out this pitiful, blubbering sound. 

“Tracking-“ Taylor wheezed, the words bubbling with drool as they poured from his lips. “-Inhumans. Gifted. A whole bunch. The potential...” The man raised his hands between them, as if to try and fend off the Asset. “Please.”

_Gifted._ People with abilities past a normal human. It gave some credibility to what Strike had said previously, about her organization. There was little information to go on, but if Hydra was trying to track down these people- The Asset turned his attention back on Taylor and lifted his foot off of the man. It gave Taylor a chance to breathe, sucking in one gargling, half-liquid breath before steel fingers wrapped themselves around his throat.

“More information,” The Asset growled. “Do you know their location?”

“No,” The word squeaked through Taylor’s lips. “But we have some leads. A bar. A hotel. Nothing concrete,” The man’s face was slowly going purple through the strain. “Not you. Please.”

The Asset was sure that the man didn’t know anything more that could be useful to him. No names. No locations. All of Hydra’s attention was immediately on the case of the ‘railroad’, which meant that either they _did_ think that he had died in the crash at the Triskelion, or that the information on his escape was highly classified. After running into Hydra agents just a week prior, the Asset was sure that someone knew of his continued existence.

Taylor’s hands came up, batting at the front of his jacket as the Asset tightened his grip on his throat. No matter what, he couldn’t let this man live. Especially knowing what he did now- the Winter Soldier’s location, his interest in Inhumans and the Gifted- he could still remember his face, pressed up against the glass of his cryo chamber, the smear his greasy cheek had left on the pane as he faded into darkness- Taylor had been younger then, leaner, with more hair, but it was still _him_.

The Asset said nothing, silent as Taylor’s life slipped from him with every twitch of his pudgy fingers, watching as his eyes glazed over. Taylor lay dead in the remains of his cheap apartment, and the Asset pulled himself to his feet, leaning over him.

They would either know that it had been him, or they would think that it had been one of the ‘railroad. _”Thought you deserved to know.”_

The taste of crushed black pepper burned brightly on his tongue before Barnes turned away, disgusted with himself.

Taylor had a gun, a cheap ‘22 stashed under his pillow. Barnes tucked it into one of the inside pockets of his coat without a thought. The fridge was empty but for a few containers of takeout. The Chinese food sat heavily in his stomach, but it filled him and fueled the energy to continue his search. He went through the motions mechanically, following the actions that felt more like reflex. He drank water straight out of the tap, unwilling to dirty a glass, risk leaving any more of a mark of his presence than necessary. He flipped through Taylor’s wallet, pulling out a credit card, a few wrinkled bills, enough that if the police were first to the scene, they might think it was a burglary. 

Then, he swiped Taylor’s laptop. It was the only thing in this entire apartment that seemed _new_ , and the only thing that might give him some more information. Tucking the charger into his coat, the computer under one arm, Barnes slipped back out the door and down the hall, leaving the door pulled shut behind him. It could be hours until someone checked up on him, and by then, Barnes would have vanished into the alleys of New York. He had time.

That night, he sat at an all-night diner, using Taylor’s cash to fund endless coffee as he read every single file available on the stolen laptop. Most of it was trash- files on now-dead employees, experiments- apparently Taylor’s job was to clean up when one of Hydra’s agents died in the field, or caused too big of a stir. That revelation left a sick smirk on Barnes’ face.

The waitress was a cute little thing with curly brown hair, a sweet smile, and a nametag reading ‘Karen’. She brought coffee without him asking, and seemed to understand that he didn’t want her attention. She left him mostly alone, coming up to refill his coffee and bring him his waffles, and a part of him almost _wanted_ her attention. He tried to smile up at her when she came for his third refill, and he couldn’t really tell if she was either politely disturbed or a little more understanding as she turned away. Embarrassed, he turned back to the laptop, throwing himself back into his work.

There was information on the Incident- little more than pictures and conjecture, but Barnes skipped that. Part of him wasn’t ready to see those pictures, the man with the shield- _”I’m with you till the end of the line.”_ \- he closed the folder without thinking too deeply on it, and moved to the next.

Files, endless files of classified information, and all about more of Hydra’s little side projects, people they had picked up, Inhumans to experiment upon. A man who could turn invisible. A woman who could scream loudly enough to shatter glass. A boy of seven who could remember everything he saw and recall it in perfect detail. A baby girl who could teleport. Name after name, picture after picture, and nearly all of them classified as deceased. Around four in the morning, Barnes shut the lid of the laptop and asked for the cheque, his voice thick. Karen dropped it by with a professional smile on her face, and asked him to come back again sometime. He decided then that he wouldn’t. Couldn’t.

He should have grabbed a backpack or a bag from somewhere. Holding the laptop under his arm looked suspicious, and he risked it getting damaged. When he stopped at a bank machine, he tried using Taylor’s credit card, and to his shock he was actually able to pull some cash from it. _They haven’t found him yet._ That was a relief. It gave him more time to think.

Barnes slunk back to his makeshift home in the warehouse right before sunrise, curling into his hole in the wall and pulling his knees up to his chest, the laptop cradled against his gut, and snoozed until he no longer felt like he was going to black out out of his control.

Tuesday afternoon came and went, the sky grey with more snow. Barnes stopped at a department store and bought a backpack, one of his first additions to his outfit that wasn’t stolen from someone’s home. He found himself wandering the streets, shoulders hunched, unsure of where to go, what to do. No direction. Taylor had only had files on personnel, not on locations or jobs or missions themselves. It could take days before Hydra made their move, and by then- There were too many unknowns. Too many people he wasn’t familiar with, too many operations that he had no experience with.

At ten in the evening, he stood in front of the Tap House on 38th.

Barnes didn’t know what he was hoping to find, hoping to learn, but Strike knew something that he didn’t. She knew about these experiments, she was working to get and to keep them out of Hydra’s hands, and there was a _saying_ about that. _The enemy of my enemy is my friend._

Maybe he needed allies. Maybe he needed people to help him. Maybe he couldn’t do this entirely alone.

He swallowed, his throat feeling like sandpaper, and he cracked open the door to the Tap House.

Barnes noticed the bartender first, an average man with dyed blonde hair and a smile that was a little too quick for his liking. The grin faded quickly when he took in the newcomers appearance- Barnes looked more like a homeless man than anyone who would be good news for a pub, and so the bartender dropped his gaze back to his glasses, cleaning with the intensity of a man who did not want to do anything else right then.

The bar was mostly empty but for two people sitting at the furthest table, one that he knew and one that he had never seen before. The new woman was a blonde, with a quick smile and bright eyes, seemingly untouched by the gloom of the bar around her, or the displeasure of the woman drinking with her.

And the other woman- his eyes would have slid right off of her if he hadn’t known exactly who he was looking for. Plain in a perfectly symmetrical way, with a long black braid and eyes that were the color of granite. Strike was looking right at him, right since he had first stepped into the Tap House.

He stepped up to the table and stood there, looking down at the two of them until the blonde looked up at him, innocence in her green eyes. “Um, can we help you?” She asked quietly.

“He’s here to see me,” Strike said evenly, her voice betraying little about how she felt about him showing up. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

“I didn’t think I’d be back.” Barnes glanced over his shoulder at the bartender and he caught Strike’s wave, the roll of her fingers just out of the corner of his eye.

“Don’t worry about him,” She said quietly. 

“You wiping his memory?” He growled, his voice grating.

“Only the details that could get one of us _killed_ ,” She snapped, and he whirled to look at her once more. She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose before gesturing to the seat across from the two of them. “Sorry. Please, sit. If you like.” 

He looked down at the seat, up at the two of them, and then slumped, sliding into the seat. For some reason, he felt defeated. 

“So, uh,” The blonde looked between him and Strike, fine brows furrowed in confusion. “This guy got a name?”

“Ask him yourself,” Strike mumbled into her glass.

That cleared up that. It seemed that she hadn’t mentioned anything about to him to anyone else so far- or at least just this one person. It was as if the last week had never happened. 

“So,” In a half second, the blonde’s voice rolled with a familiar accent, and she extended one hand towards him, smiling brilliantly. “Добрый вечер.”

Barnes reeled back, the legs of his chair squealing across the filthy floor of the bar. _Russian._ The logical part of his mind translated her words calmly. “Кто Вы?” He growled, lips forming the words out of sheer reflex, but suddenly he was very aware of the pistol strapped to the inside of his jacket, the metal cold against his ribs even through the layers of shirts he had accumulated.

“Gab, now’s _really_ not the time.” Strike seemed to have noticed his distress, having half-risen out of her seat, standing, leaning over the table between them. “Drop it.”

“It’s fine, Strike,” The blonde didn’t seem to notice the faint grinding sound that was Barnes’ teeth. “He’s just surprised-“

“Jesus Christ, Gab, if you don’t drop it this instant I will _personally_ escort you out of here right now for your own damn safety.” Strike slammed one hand down on the table to punctuate her words, and for a half-second, every single eye in the bar was on her.

The blonde girl finally seemed to realize the situation, sitting back in her chair and folding her hands in her lap. “Okay,” She whispered, mollified. “Sorry.”

“You too,” Strike looked at him, and it was only then that he realized that he had unzipped the front of his jacket, and his fingers were curled around the handle of his stolen gun. He didn’t even remember doing it, just- He bit his lip and sat back down.

She looked between the two of them and let out a long, tired breath before slumping back down into her seat. “Alright. From the beginning,” She pointed at the blonde girl, and her voice dropped back to the hushed tones she had used prior. “This is Gab. Calls herself Gabbie. She knows languages. All of them.” Strike turned her hand over and jabbed her thumb right at Barnes’ chest. “And this is James. I helped him out last week.”

“Hi, James,” Gab raised her hand slightly.

James curled his lip in response.

“Well,” The blonde cleared her throat. “Good to see you making friends, Strike. I should probably get going.”

“That might be a good idea.” She didn’t even try to hide the relief in her voice as the blonde stood and started shifting out of her seat. “Drive safe.”

“Yes ma’am.” Gab looked over her shoulder at him for a half second before leaving, nearly fleeing the bar in her haste to get away.

“She didn’t mean anything by it,” When Strike spoke this time, her voice was soft. Barnes looked back at her, and after Gab had left, it almost seemed like all the fight had gone out of her. She was slumped in the direction of the table, fingers curled around a half-full glass of something pale and fizzy. A slice of lemon floated lazily in the glass. “Sorry.”

“Stop saying ‘sorry’,” He growled, slipping his backpack off of one shoulder. 

“Alright,” She said easily. “Then why are you here?”

He took a deep breath, and then realized that he didn’t really _have_ a reason. Nothing concrete. “I-“ He paused, closed his mouth, and then looked down at his hands, folded into his lap. “I don’t know.”

“Okay,” Strike sat up in her chair, leaning against the back. She looked at him, her slate-grey eyes emotionless, unassuming. “What happened to you after you left my apartment?”

Looking back on his week, it felt like a jumbled mess. Barnes couldn’t say when he had eaten, or where he had been. He remembered Taylor, the feeling of his fingers around the man’s throat. The _pop_ of his ribs under his foot. Barnes drummed his fingers across the side of his backpack, bundled in his lap. “There was a Hydra agent,” He mumbled.

He caught the raise of her eyebrows. “What happened to them?”

“He’s dead.” Barnes’ voice rang with a dull finality. “I killed him.”

“Why?”

“He saw me. I had to stop him from-“ He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling the echo of electricity flicker across steel fingertips. “Trying to bring me in.”

“What’s in the bag?” She spoke softly, but he barely noticed the tone of her voice.

“His laptop,” He muttered. “I was looking for information.”

“What information?”

He exhaled sharply. “He said something about Gifted. I needed to know.”

Strike was silent for a long moment. “James,” She said, and then waited for him to open his eyes. “If you don’t mind, I would like to see that information. It could help a lot of people.”

“Okay,” He nodded, the movement a sharp jerk of his chin. “I saw everything I needed to.”

“My offer is still open, you know,” She ducked her head, trying to catch him, to look him in the eye. When he finally did manage to look her in the eye, she smiled, and the expression was so suddenly bright, Barnes was stunned. “You can leave anytime, but I have room for you.”

Again, she offered, but this time he didn’t shy away. He looked at her, steady, pushing past the reflexive fear in his gut. “Why?” Why would she offer this? To him? He had left once, no thanks, no apology, nothing. She was _stupid_ , she was impulsive-

“Because I’ve been where you are,” She said, and the honesty in her voice rang true. “Not exactly, but close enough to know that the first thing I needed back then was a warm bed and food. And I can do that.”

He looked back down, at his lap. At his stolen gloves and jeans, at the life he had tried to scavenge for himself, but every time he took a step forward, he was pushed two steps back. He couldn’t let go. He couldn’t move on, not like this. Not like this.

“Alright,” He said, the word trailing on the end of an exhale. It felt like an admission of weakness, making him feel smaller than he actually was, but the admission tasted of truth.

“Alright,” She echoed, and a small smile touched her lips.


	4. Flicker

The bartender didn’t give either of them a second glance as they left, slipping out of the bar just after midnight. The two of them were silent for the walk to her apartment, side-by-side down the street through flickering street lights and falling snow. Strike had folded her hands into the dark pockets of her coat, a grey scarf the same middling shade as her eyes wrapped around the tan skin of her throat. Barnes watched her out of the corner of his eye, unsure if each turn they made, each step they took, was going to be his last. If she was secretly a Hydra agent. If she was secretly a member of SHIELD.

Yet, they reached her building without issue, and she led him back up the stairs to her apartment. As he took a turn up to the second landing, his hand touched the railing, and he staggered - _stumbles against the railing. Bleeding. A smear of blood across the banister. She drags him back up_ \- Barnes looked up at Strike’s back, his lips pressed together, and he tried to smother the doubts within him that told him to run.

“And here we are,” Her voice rang out, as if she didn’t notice him faltering, cracking open the door to her apartment. “Chateau Strike.”

The apartment was everything he remembered it being. Plain and tidy, shelves filled with books that had been carefully filed in some order that he didn’t understand. A thick wool blanket woven out of blues and greens had been thrown over the back of the only couch, the closest thing to décor the house had. The appliances in the kitchen were a clinical, brushed steel, the counters were a laminate grey. It was so _her_ that it was almost hard to look at. The little he knew of Strike, the little he had cobbled together through two evenings was almost grounding. Barnes had met, had gotten to know so few people since-

His fingers tingled at the thought, and he pushed it away. 

“Make yourself comfortable,” Her voice drifted through the apartment, and he turned to shut the door behind himself. She had already turned the corner into the bedroom, pulling her coat off of her shoulders as she went.

James stood for a moment, feeling out of place in such a tidy space. Looking down, he yanked his boots off and tossed them against the rack of shoes set up against the wall. They thunked against the wall and settled with a dull sound, and he glanced back over his shoulder. When she didn’t come out and yell at him for the noise, he decided it was safe to go on with ‘settling’.

He padded through the kitchen to the living room, stopping in front of the bookshelves. He reached out, fingers brushing against the spines- the books were well-worn, white creases lining up and down the edges from where they had been folded open before. James had seen these books as just another part of a tidy, clinical household, but in reality they were almost rebelling against the orderliness of the room. He pulled one book free- the tops of the pages were yellowed from old age, and the edges were dog-eared, but the cover was red, emblazoned with the image of a screaming man, _’A Clockwork Orange’_. 

“You can read it, if you like,” 

Strike stepped out from around the corner, her hand resting on the swell of one hip. She was wearing a long sleeved shirt and jeans, feet bare against the lino. James looked down at the book in his hand, and then pulled it a little closer to himself, to his chest.

“It’s one of my favorites,” She continued, stepping into the kitchen and cracking open the fridge. “They made a movie too. Pretty good.”

Perhaps he would read it. If he had time. If he didn’t leave. James looked back down at the book for a long moment, at the tortured expression written across the cover. He brought it with him as he walked to the kitchen, held closely to his chest.

“You hungry?” She asked, pulling out a plastic container of something that looked like soup, sloshing heavily against the sides of the bowl.

His mouth watered in anticipation. “Very,” He murmured. 

She cracked the lid and tossed the container into the microwave behind her. “Coffee?”

“No.” He slung his backpack off of his shoulders and laid it to rest across the dining room table. “Water,” And as an afterthought, “Please.”

She nodded silently, and in a handful of minutes a hot container of chicken soup and a glass of water was clunked down in front of him at the table. He looked down at his meal, and felt a hot bloom of saliva just under his tongue. Strike had already moved away by the time he started shoveling fire-hot soup into his mouth, uncaring of how sloppy he seemed.

He watched her through his bangs, dark hair falling into his eyes, as she sat heavily on the couch, pulling the laptop he had given her into her lap. She cracked the lid open, clicking through the start screen before going through the most recent list of documents. James watched her, eating noisily, savoring the heat of his dinner, the way it pooled in his gut with a familiar comfort.

“We can talk in the morning,” Her voice floated over the back of the couch, quietly drawling. She sounded exhausted, even while she clicked through the laptop’s contents. “You should get some sleep.”

He swallowed, messily wiping his chin with the back of his hand. “Shouldn’t you go to bed?”

“You can have it,” She mumbled, waving one hand above her head before letting it drop back down beside her. “I’ll take the couch tonight.”

He felt the protest rise up inside of him before he spoke. “This is your place,” He started, and then cleared his throat. “I shouldn’t-“

“James,” She cut in, and out of reflex he stopped talking. “I’m gonna be up for a little bit looking through this. You can go on ahead. I’m not using it.”

Barnes laughed. More like a snort, a sharp exhale, but he laughed, looking down into his soup. There was no arguing with a woman like that, he decided. Not now, anyway.

When he finished his food, he dumped the Tupperware into the sink, wincing as it made a dull clatter against the sides. He froze for a moment, waiting for a follow-up scolding, but when Strike made no move to shift from her seat on the couch, he decided that she was buried too far into her work to care.

James walked around the side of the couch and looked down at the woman sitting there. She had somehow fallen asleep in the ten minutes he had finished eating, laptop still open, her head resting the back of the couch. Strike looked almost… pleased in her sleep, at peace. Somehow relaxed, even sleeping on a couch, an unknown man in her house. James didn’t understand her. He remembered her in the alley, her face flushed as she had tried to talk him down, his fist tangled in the front of her coat. He could have killed her, wrapped the fingers of his steel hand around her throat and _squeezed_ , just like he had so many times before.

_”I don’t do that anymore,”_

He gritted his teeth and turned away from her, disgusted with the direction his thoughts were taking him. It had been like this ever since the Potomac, since he had pulled the man they called ‘Captain America’ from the water. He was still the Asset, still the Winter Soldier, constantly looking for the easiest way to eliminate his target, the smoothest way to get from point A to point B, surveying every room for escape routes, for sniping positions. Even without consciously looking for it, Barnes knew that he could flip the table to block the front entry way, access through the kitchen. He could go out the window, swing to the right to get to the fire escape, exit through the back alley. 

He hated it. He fought against the Asset, against the memory of ice and electricity, but there was a part of James Barnes, deep down, that wasn’t sure that he could ever properly leave that part of himself behind. Even if he could, did he really want to? Did he want to just forget what Hydra had done to him for the past seventy years? Did he want to go back to being that face in the Smithsonian, the war hero? The man that Captain America had called ‘Bucky’?

James realized that he had clenched his hands into white-knuckled fists, so tight that his palms burned where his nails had dug in to the calloused skin there. He glanced back over his shoulder, looking down at the sleeping woman, and let out a breath he hadn’t known he had been holding, hissing through clenched teeth. She was more recognizable in sleep, as if she wasn’t conscious of her powers, of the people around her. He actually noticed the strong bridge of her nose, the clear, sharp line of her jaw. He had walked out of her apartment the last time and fifteen minutes after, he couldn’t have told anyone anything about her, other than her name and the blurry memory of a dark braid streaked with blue.

Now, though, he burned her face into his memory, into the Asset’s memory, because if his gut feeling was _wrong_ , if he was going to wake up to cryo again, then he was damn well going to remember who he was going to hunt down.

-

He slept heavily, deeply, right through the rising sun and until the door to the bedroom cracked open and he pulled the pistol he had stolen from Thomas out from under the pillow where he had stashed it, flicking the safety off without a thought and aiming it at-

Strike stood in the open doorway, one hand on the knob, one on the doorframe, her eyes half-lidded from sleep. Her hair was a mess, mostly loose from the braid she normally wore, and her expression- “It’s just me,” She grumbled, but she still stayed perfectly still, unmoving as he scrutinized her, and then slowly flicked the safety back on. 

He looked blankly at her in silence for a moment before lowering the gun and then, quietly, muttered a, “Sorry,” into the space between them.

“Hey, thanks for not shooting me,” She said dryly, and then stepped into the room, leaving the door open behind her. “Just wanted to grab a change of clothes before I hop into the shower.”

At that, Barnes looked down at himself and realized that he had simply passed out on top of the covers, still dressed in the same clothes he had stolen over the course of the last week. At least he had taken his boots off at the door. 

“What did you do with those sweats you grabbed from me last week anyway?” Strike asked as she pulled open the top drawer on the far left, shuffling through the contents.

“Left ‘em behind when I-“ James felt guilt settle at the back of his throat, and swallowed. “-grabbed these.”

She snorted into the drawer. “Great. Well, we should get you some clothes you didn’t steal. Maybe later we can run out and grab something.”

He glanced around himself and realized there wasn’t any sort of clock in the room. “What time is it?” He asked, swinging his legs off of the side and rolling his shoulders.

“Around one in the afternoon,” There was a sheepish tone to her voice as she turned around, and she shrugged. “Guess we were really tired. I’m gonna get into the shower. Raid the fridge if you want anything for, uh. Lunch, I suppose.”

He watched her go before standing, leaving the pistol on top of the bed behind him. Barnes slipped out of his jacket, leaving it in a bundled mess on the floor. He heard the shower start elsewhere in the apartment, and he stepped out of the bedroom.

He waited in the kitchen until he heard the shower go down to a trickle, and then silence. He glanced at the fridge, licking his lips- he wasn’t hungry, not yet, not this early in the morning, but he _wanted_ to eat. Even the soup the night before, microwaved and hot enough to burn the inside of his mouth, it had been tastier than any nutrition packet he had been doled out in Hydra. 

Strike stepped out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam, her hair bundled up in a brown towel at the top of her head. Her cheeks were flushed, and she seemed a hundred times more awake than when he had last seen her.

“You should probably hop in there too,” She said, nodding towards the room behind her. “There’s plenty of hot water.”

Barnes stood, and then looked down at himself. He hadn’t showered in… well, he didn’t remember. He had washed his face in bathroom stalls, swam through a river, soaked in a tub while wounded, but it wasn’t the same. 

“I can wash your clothes, too.” She stepped past him. “You can leave them outside of the bathroom. I’ll drop off a robe or something for you to use, but you shouldn’t get back into dirty clothes. You’ll get sick or something.”

“I won’t get sick,” He said absently.

She snorted, rolling her eyes. “Still. You stink.”

James snapped his chin back up to look at her, indignant.

“Hey man,” She raised her hands, palms out towards him. “Don’t mean to offend you, but. Just being honest.”

He sniffed, offended, but he trudged past her to the bathroom. He shut the door behind him and took a deep breath before looking at himself in the mirror. 

James didn’t recognize the man looking at him. His beard had grown out over the past few weeks, until it was scraggly and matted. His hair was greasy, stringy, hanging over pale skin and gaunt cheeks. He ran his flesh hand over his face before baring his teeth. When had he last brushed his teeth? It felt like he had just woken up after a seventy year nap, just now coming to terms with how disgusting he was.

He stripped down, out of his stolen clothes, kicking them just outside of the door and into the hallway outside and looked himself full in the mirror once more. His skin looked grey, mottled with the remainder of greenish bruises, the silver lines of scars across his chest and arms. The stab wounds from the week prior were almost completely healed, pale pink scars across his ribs and gut. The skin that was joined to his left arm, his metal arm, was irritated and cracked from being exposed to the elements to often over the past few weeks. 

James put his hands down, flat on the counter, and glanced down. A blue razor, cheap and plastic, sat on the side of the sink. Beside it, a pair of short black scissors. After a quick breath, a sharp intake, he reached for the scissors.

Slowly, he cut through the matted, curly hair across his cheeks, down his throat. Clumps of black hair collected in the bottom of the sink, washed away. He lathered up his chin and cheeks, the skin over his throat with the sliver of soap to the side of the sink. The motions were practiced, a reflex from older times, but rusty enough to leave nicks of red across his jawline. When he washed his face, leaving thin streaks of red down his cheeks, he looked like a changed man. Shaved bare, his face looked younger. A haunting reminder of the picture of ‘Bucky’ in the Smithsonian. He ran his hand over his face- thin, oddly pink against the grey shade of the rest of his skin, and he shook his head. Maybe he would think about growing it back out later. He wasn’t comfortable with that reflection in the mirror. Not yet.

He stepped into the shower, drawing the curtain behind him, and fiddled with the tap until it blasted ice-cold water across his shoulders and back. He jumped back, flinching, blinking water out of his eyes as he fussed with the tap. 

James closed his eyes as the water poured over his shoulders, easing tension and strain from his muscles. His palms flat against the wall in front of him, he stood stock-still, until the water no longer ran a dusty grey, until he had collected his thoughts.

His hands were splayed against the wall in front of him. Two different hands, two different arms. There was a difference- textures were lost to the insensitivity of his mechanical arm, temperature and light touch, but he could still _feel_. It almost felt like a parody, as if the fingers on his flesh hand were hypersensitive, picking up every detail underneath them. He let out a long sigh, his breath puffing out against them, and he pushed the thought away, compartmentalizing it. False or no, steel or flesh, he at least _had_ two arms. He couldn’t do what he did with just one.

He washed himself, lathering himself down with fruity smelling soaps and shampoos, until the water ran cold and he was left shivering. Barnes stepped out, tracking water across the floor as he retrieved a towel, and he glanced back at himself in the mirror.

In that moment, his hair slicked back, away from his face-

_Standing in his old house. His dad was showing him how to shave- He looked too much like his old man, the nose, the chin, the jaw. Mom said he’d be a dreamboat when he grew up. He was young enough that he wasn’t really sure_ how _he felt about the idea of having a girl._

James ducked his head and pushed his hair forward to start towelling it off. When he raised his head again, looked at himself again in the mirror, his hair had fallen in front of his face, long and messy.

It was easier to face himself this way.

He stepped out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around his hips, and froze at the sound of voices.

“Tomorrow?”

Strike’s voice came from the room off to the right- the laundry room, he would guess. She was barely audible over the sound of the machine rumbling, but he could make out what she was saying. She was on the phone, the pauses between sentences long and obvious. He pressed his lips into a thin line and _listened_.

“Yeah, I guess I can.” Another long pause, and she sighed. “Yeah, I’m just… busy. Company. You know.” 

Not Gab, he guessed. Someone who might not know about him yet. Apparently she still hadn’t told most others about him. Yet. Barnes wasn’t sure how long that was going to last.

“None of your business, Flicker,” She slammed what sounded like the door of another machine. The sound of banging aluminum rattled down the hallway towards him. “I’ll take the job. Eleven tomorrow, at the exchange. I’ll figure something out then. Alright?” A pause of a few seconds, and there was clear annoyance in her voice when she finished. “Yeah, yeah. Right. Talk to you then.”

He didn’t hear her hang up, but he stepped back into the bathroom as she stepped out of the laundry room, shaking her head. She jerked her head up as she caught his movement out of the corner of her eye, and when she looked at him, her gaze lingered a little longer than it had before.

She cleared her throat. “You look younger without the beard,” She admitted, pointing at him with her cellphone, gripped in one hand.

James reached up and rubbed his cheek. He could almost feel the whisper of stubble growing back already. “I might grow it back,” He murmured. “I don’t like it.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, and he mirrored the expression right back at her. 

“Well,” She said slowly. “Good. Your clothes’ll be done in about an hour. Want a robe?” Strike cracked a grin at him, crooked and playful. “You took the last pair of pants that would fit’cha.”

He glanced back down at himself and shrugged. “Don’t really care.”

“Well alrighty then,” She nodded, and slipped past him. She took a wide berth around him, keeping her distance, and he noticed she didn’t put her back to him as she moved to the kitchen. “Let’s run out later and get you a change of clothes.”

“Why don’t we go tomorrow?” He asked, and it was reflex to test her. She hadn’t said anything about the phone call yet. She didn’t know he had heard. Or did she? Had she read his mind? 

“I’m busy tomorrow,” She said smoothly- or was it smoothly? Barnes frowned as she turned away, unsure what to make of her. “Work. You know how-“ Strike paused, and then she shook her head. “Well. No, you don’t.”

He looked at her for a long moment, eyes narrowed. He couldn’t trust her. Wouldn’t trust her. Even here, naked but for a towel, weaponless, he was ready. His fingers curled into a tight fist at his side.

“Look,” She took a deep breath and let it out in a noisy sigh, taking her hair down from the towelled bundle at the top of her head. Her hair tumbled out, long and dark and messy, crinkling over her shoulders. She ran her fingers through it as she thought, as she talked. “It’s confidential. I’m not going to tell anyone about you, James, but it goes two ways.” She looked at him as she worked a tangle out of her hair, barefoot on the kitchen floor. “I need to protect other people, too.”

That stung. He pulled back, chin rising a half-inch as if recoiling from her words. How quickly had he gone from trusting her, talking about shaving his face, to expecting her to sell him out. To tell him everything. He hated it- the secrets, the lies, but he couldn’t say _anything_. Not while he hid behind a false face, a name that fit strangely in his mouth.

“Okay,” The word came out clipped, short, and he walked past her to sit on the couch. “Got it. No questions.”


	5. Friction

James was back in his clothes by dinnertime, and he let Strike drive him out to a strip mall to find him a change of clothes. They made few stops on their way- Strike stopped to get a bag of dried pasta noodles that was large enough to take up a full seat in the back of her car, and a couple jars of off-brand tomato sauce.

Speaking of the car, somehow Strike had extended the absolute plain-ness of her life even to her choice in vehicle. Her Camry was painted in a dull silver, and slipped in between exact replicas of itself in any parking lot she slid into. It was… boring. Dull. Barnes spent most of the trip staring longingly at fast cars and the odd motorcycle that passed them by, barely listening to whatever modern music the radio was murmuring.

She ‘forced’ him into a few pairs of jeans, sweats, a few shirts, piling stacks of clothes on him and shooing him towards the change rooms to check the fit. Reluctantly, he went along with her direction, muttering curses under his breath as he tried to not crash into the flimsy walls of the change room.

When they got to the counter, reflexively he reached back to retrieve Taylor’s wallet- the credit card was probably cut off and flagged by now, he realized. If he had tried to use it, he would do nothing other than bring the remainder of Hydra down around them. Seeing him hesitate, Strike slipped her own card out, and he watched her drum her fingers on the desk in an off-kilter rhythm. The teller, a boy in his late teens with messy, side-swept hair, immediately turned his attention away from James. He just… forgot about his presence.

“How do you do that?” He asked as they walked out, heading back to her car with his purchases.

“Do what?” She asked, cracking the back door and throwing her purchases in the back.

James rolled his eyes to keep himself from glaring at her. “The mind powers.”

“Oh,” Strike shrugged and slid into the driver’s seat. “Reflex. I don’t really think about it. Makes it harder if I do.”

He dropped into the seat next to her, throwing the bags over his shoulder and into the back seat beside the noodles. He watched her as she backed up, one arm over the back of his seat, before turning out of the parking lot. “Walk me through it.” He said as she turned out onto the main street. He needed to know what she could do. Her capabilities.

“It’s…” She bit her lip, glancing up into the rear view mirror. “Complicated. When it comes down to it, I can usually only delete and replace memories, or I can partially experience a current memory. Hear what you’re hearing, feel what you’re feeling, that sort of thing. I can’t make someone do something against their will, or fry their minds. I can send basic telepathic messages if I concentrate, but nothing overly complicated.”

“How?” He growled, and he saw her gaze flicker over to him, grey eyes narrowed. “Do you just look at someone and know?”

“Kind of?” She looked away, back at the road. “I can kinda do stuff in the spur of the moment- make a cop think we’re close friends from high school, or make someone forget the look of my face, but something more than that takes time. Concentration. I have to, like...” She reached over to her left, rolling her window down. Cool air blasted in through the sliver. “I have to understand what would make someone tick before I can do a lot to change things.” 

Her words sunk in. So she probably hadn’t done much to him. Yet. She had said he was hard to do much anything to when they had first met, that his mind was strong against it or something, but _what did that mean_? Barnes glanced out of his window, brows furrowed. 

“So what about me?” He asked, his voice soft. He spoke without thinking, just out of reflex. “What makes me tick?”

“I don’t really know, yet,” She admitted, and her response was quick enough that he was almost satisfied. Almost. He waited as she kept talking, “Maybe I could push harder, but I haven’t had to.” Strike glanced over at him and smiled, and like when she was sleeping, she lost the blurry edge to her visage. “Which is fine by me.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “How can I know for sure?” Soft, again. His words were almost whipped away by the wind sneaking through the window. 

“You can’t,” She spoke frankly. “But like I said. No questions. If one of us was going to try and kill the other one, well, you could have offed me last night, or any other time in the last week, and I could have left you in the trash.”

_You’re going to have to trust someone, sooner or later._

He felt those words, the impressions of a thought, _push_ against the sides of his temples, and he looked at her out of the corner of his eye. Unsure if that was her, pushing at him, or if it was just himself, the ghost of Bucky Barnes in the corner of his mind. He glanced back at her, at her tight grip on the wheel, the determined set of her jaw, and he _wanted_ to trust her. In that moment, he wanted to trust someone, anyone, that they wouldn’t hand him over to Hydra, or Shield, or-

He could see an image, frozen into his mind. The shape of a shield, emblazoned with a star. Blue and white and red.

No. Not yet.

“Hey, you want fries?” Strike’s voice snapped him out of the drudges of his mind. She pointed over the steering wheel at a giant yellow ‘M’. “Let’s get some food. I don’t have much at my place.”

-

She tried to pawn her bed off on him again that night, but he saw through her attempt. He planted himself square on the couch, unwilling to move. The living room felt safer, to him. Less permanent. Less like a home. Like he wasn’t bumming off of her charity.

Strike gave in eventually, throwing a blanket at him when he didn’t seem to be paying attention. When he caught it, snapping it out of midair, the fibres caught in the joints and plates of his metal arm. He growled with annoyance, and he caught her chuckling as she went to bed, shutting the door softly behind herself.

That night, he dreamed of the chair, and awoke in a cold sweat, breathing heavily, fingers tearing holes in the quilt she had given him. When he was able to remember where he was- _Bacon and eggs, black pepper. Salted fries. A book. Strike, her name is Strike_ \- he found himself standing, looking out the window. Late, or early enough that the sky was still black, the stars completely hidden behind a layer of smog. The city looked so different from the one in his memories, taller somehow. Darker. 

Was that how New York actually looked now, or was it because that was how the Winter Soldier saw it?

-

Nine in the morning, Strike came out of her bedroom, binding her hair back into the same braid she always wore it in. She was moving quickly, as if she was running late, taking long strides across the floor to get to the kitchen.

James watched her as she pattered around, just over the top of the book he had borrowed. She was right. It _had_ been a good one. It grounded him in the now. 

“You’re in a hurry,” He grunted.

“Slept in a bit,” She said shortly, dropping two slices of stale bread into the toaster. “Usually I’m better than this. I hate being late.”

“When are you supposed to be there?” _Eleven. You said eleven._

“Around eleven.” The fridge door closed with a quiet _paff_ as she pulled the jam out. “I should be early though. Just in case.”

He glanced back down at his book and turned a page. The Ludovico technique seemed like a terrible idea. “What should I do?”

She paused in buttering her toast, looking over her shoulder at him. “Whatever you want, short of burning down the apartment,” Strike went back to her breakfast. “Read a book. Raid the fridge. Watch a movie. If you decide to go out, make sure to lock up behind you. I’ll leave a key on the counter for you.”

“Okay,” He nodded, not taking his eyes off of his book.

She left at eight minutes to ten in the morning, the door slamming behind her as she rushed out the front door.

At 9:58, James put his book down and ate a plain slice of bread.

At 10:01, Barnes got back up, looking out the window. Cars puttered down the street below, lethargic and slow. 

At 10:05, he opened the door to the fridge. Closed it. Opened it again. Closed it again.

At 10:07, he brushed his teeth.

At 10:12, James slung his backpack over his shoulder, grabbed a ball cap out of the sack of clothing Strike had gotten him the day before, and walked right out the front door.

There were only so many places she could have gone. The exchange. Inside the deep recesses of his mind, the Asset stirred awake. She had said it as if it were a location. Not just a place to exchange goods, or knowledge. The Exchange. The Stock Exchange. It would be busy, heavily populated. Easy to slip in and out- for her, at least. It would be more difficult for him, for the Winter Soldier.

Good thing he had shaved.

-

At 11:03, Barnes had situated himself in a coffeehouse just down the street from the exchange, with a clear view of the front corner. He had stolen a car from a few blocks away from Strike’s building, and then left it in a public parking space a block from here. No damage done, but if Strike found out-

He snorted into his cup of coffee. She wouldn’t. And even if she did, what was she going to do to him?

He watched, waiting. He could be wrong. He could have come all this way, and she could have been at some other hotspot, but his gut, the reflexes trained from years of missions, of tracking, everything said that this was _it_.

And at 11:09, he caught sight of a long black braid with a streak of blue twined through, swinging behind a woman he knew far too well for their short time spent together.

She had stopped at the corner, hands in her pockets, looking out onto the street around them. Barnes kept his mind carefully blank- that was almost too easy to fall back to, a dissonance from the world around him. Detaching himself from the current mission. Only the objective remained, and the Asset within treated it just as he had treated every other mission he had taken on.

Locate the target. Follow the target. Ascertain their mission.

After that, well. Nothing. He would decide then. There was still a chance that she was meeting with Hydra, or SHIELD, or something of that ilk. He stood, slipping out of the coffee shop, trying to find some place closer, where he might be able to listen in on whatever conversation she was having.

And then he would decide if he had to kill her.

-

Strike stood on the corner of the Exchange, shoulders rolled up and against the cold. Winter was the worst time to take these jobs- sometimes it would be hours until they showed up, dropped off their cargo, leaving her waiting until then.

She shifted where she stood, looking out into the crowd of the Exchange. Hundreds, thousands at least, of people passed through here every day. Cameras were scanned over, not studied unless there was an incident, and there usually wasn’t anything of note here. No, for being such a large building, almost a landmark, the Exchange was wonderfully dull.

So she waited. Her mind distracted, she started reaching out, opening the minds of the people who passed her by. Construction workers, heading off to finish work on buildings left in disarray after the Incident. Kids, blowing off school, walking through the downtown. Businessmen, inside, panicking about stocks and prices and things that were way over her head.

_No, sell on DOW, it’s dropping like a tank._

_Maybe he does really like me. Maybe he wasn’t just joking around._

_Three more days until my vacation. Maybe Melinda won’t be mad at me by the time we leave._

_The coffee here is terrible._

_There she is._

She started, glancing off to her right. A familiar face through the crowd, a raised hand to mean an intended meeting. A tall black man, skin like ink, a wide, friendly smile on his lips. She had known Radio for almost four years now, longer than most other Gifted she had met on the field. He was a good guy; smart, clever, gentle with his charges. He was usually the first face most new recruits saw, and he gave off a good first impression.

Radio was dressed smartly, in a long black coat and a bright gold scarf. He fit in with most of the businessmen here at the Exchange, with his pressed shirts and shined shoes. Strike always felt a little too plain next to him, even if that was the intention.

Beside him walked a kid.

Not a child, a kid. A teenager- he could have passed for twenty if she was being generous. He was cute in a young way, with dimpled cheeks and blonde hair swept over his forehead. His sweater was old, tattered around the sleeves, the front pocket baggy and worn, but still cute. Not even remotely her type though, and she was old enough that thinking about it made her cringe.

She swept through his mind as they stepped up to her, just a general check, and found nothing. Clean. No Hydra, no SHIELD, no Agent work or experimentation. Just a kid.

“Miss, do you know the best way to get to the train station?” Radio rumbled, his voice smooth and deep. 

“You could walk, but it’s about ten blocks,” She finished her half of the code phrase, feeling a little silly. All of this secret operative stuff still felt weird, even if she had been immersed in it for so long. Even if she had pushed for it to be included in their Railroad.

“That’s fine, I could use the exercise.” Radio finished. All clear. Nobody followed them, as far as they knew, and no complications with the pickup. One of the smoothest transfers she’d had in the past year, ever since more people started paying attention to their kind.

“That’s bullshit and we both know that,” She said with a wink, and Radio chuckled.

“Hey man,” Radio turned to the kid, who shook his hair out of his eyes with a practiced flick of his head. “This is your girl. She’ll get you where you need to go. Nice meeting you, man.”

The kid shook the man’s hand, and Strike wondered how long the two of them had been hanging out together. She didn’t have the details on Radio’s job, or how he found these people, because it was too dangerous for her to know. She already knew enough about what they did. If she went rogue, or was captured, it could mean disaster.

“Thanks,” The kid said, and his voice was surprisingly deep for such a young-looking man. “For, uh. Everything.”

“No problem,” Radio replied. “You take it easy, Strike.”

“Always do.” She nodded at him, and then flipped through his mind, erasing key points of their meeting. Nothing in particular- just the kid’s name, his birthday. ID information. That was as far as she was willing to take it, and Radio turned away without saying anything, melting back into the crowd.

“Strike, huh?” The kid looked up at her, a few inches shorter than she was. “Cool name.”

“You got a name yet?” She asked, but at the same time she was flipping through the minds of the crowd around them. _Nothing to see here._ Eyes turned away from them, people stopped listening. Cameras wouldn’t pick up their conversation or read their lips from here. Perfectly safe, for the time being.

“Oh, I’m Cody.”

“No,” She almost reached up to plant her face in her hands. “Radio told you. We use code names. It’s safer for everyone that way.”

“Oh yeah, my code name,” The kid suddenly seemed excited, rocking back on his heels. “I’m Slick.”

She looked at him, long and hard. “…Slick.”

It wasn’t a question, but he was already defending himself. “Yeah, you know. I can like, make things slippery, or like really rough.”

Strike looked at him, and suddenly felt entirely too old for this conversation. Usually she was ferrying adults, or kids young enough to not know any better. “Friction. Why didn’t you call yourself Friction?”

“Oh man,” His brown eyes grew wide, and he stopped rocking back and forth. “I didn’t even think of that.”

“I’m not-“ She sighed. “I’m not calling you Slick.”

“Yeah man, Friction’s way better.” He smiled. “So much cooler.”

This was going to be a long day. She would have to take him down to get new identification at Gab’s place, and then to the bus depot to send him on the final part of his journey. She was the highest ranking Gifted in this area, but New York wasn’t a place to protect people like them. Cops, superheroes, Hydra, all sorts of people were on the lookout for odd things in a city like this. A kid like Friction would get themselves strung up in a week if he wasn’t careful. 

She would be sending him to Flicker, their newest equal operative in Philadelphia. He said he had a place for the kid, and she wasn’t about to fight to keep this idiot in her territory.

“Alright kid,” She sighed, looking over her shoulder. She felt like she was being watched, like someone was following her, but she would know. She should know. And who would, anyway? Not on a trip like this. “Let’s get you on your way to your new home.”

-

The kid was an idiot.

She had dragged him to Gab’s apartment- the entire way, he hadn’t shut up about how _cool_ the whole ‘operative thing’ was, and how he was so pumped to use code names and secret passwords and coded correspondence, and Strike wondered if she was really this unaware when she had been nineteen.

They sat in Gab’s living room as she forged him a passport, and when he said, “Yeah, my roommate kicked me out,” Strike’s head snapped up to look the kid in the eye. Well, there it was. They all had the same story. Being left behind, or kicked out. Leaving on your own. Running away. Maybe she could use that to get over her annoyance with the kid.

“What happened?” She asked slowly. “If you’re alright with saying.”

“Oh no man, Mike was super cool. Best bros. You know.” Friction bumped his fists together and grinned. “For _life_.”

“So why did your best bro kick you out?”

“Oh, I uh,” Friction reached up, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well my powers weren’t really uh, in control.”

She could think of that as being pretty chaotic. Slipping everywhere, destroying pieces of their home, or suddenly upping the friction of an item and starting a fire. His powers had incredible potential, if utilized carefully.

“I uh, kinda slipped into his girlfriend.”

Strike gave him a second long, hard look.

He at least had the grace to look ashamed. “I didn’t plan on it,” He protested. “It just kinda happened. We were both naked and like,” The kid swept his hand through the air between them. “ _Swoosh._ ”

Strike looked over at Gab, bent over her table, and could feel her laughing in the back of her mind. _This is the shit I have to put up with,_ she thought, sending it as a single pulse of annoyance. 

Gab’s shoulders shook with silent laughter.

Annoyance prickled at her senses, sharp and harsh, and she felt justified. _See? This kid’s an idiot._ She sent back that feeling of justification, of the rightness of her emotion.

Wait.

She looked up. There were only the three of them here. Gab’s boyfriend wasn’t due to be home for a few hours at the very least, and she had _felt_ someone. She reached out as she stood, looking out the window.

Who? Someone was listening in. Yet she couldn’t feel anyone else, even as she pushed out at the walls around them, into rooms surrounding them. 

Strike pressed her lips together.

“What’s up?” Friction asked, standing behind her.

“Nothing,” She said, too quickly, and Gab looked up at her, concerned. She was smarter than she seemed, when she wasn’t a few drinks in at a bar. “We need to get going soon. You almost done, Gab?”

“Just about,” She said, nodding. “Couple of minutes, and mister ‘Mark Johnson’ will be on his way to Philly.”

Strike didn’t look away from the window, folding her arms as she searched. Drop off the kid first. That was her priority. Whoever it was that was listening in on them probably didn’t want the kid. Friction was useful, but not worth Hydra’s precious few resources on.

No. This was different.

-

“Thanks man, you’ve been awesome,” Friction just _wouldn’t_ get out of her car, resting his hand on the top of the passenger door as he leaned in. “And thanks for the lunch!”

“Mhm,” She nodded, a tight-lipped smile visible on her face. She still hadn’t found out who had been listening in on their conversation at Gab’s place, and it had left her on-edge and even more annoyed at the kid. “You’re gonna miss your bus, Friction.”

“Yeah, yeah, but seriously, thanks man.”

“Don’t mention it. Ever.”

“You’re hilarious, Strike,”

She looked up into her rear view mirror in that instant to see if anyone was trying to get into her parking spot, and- _Shit._

Friction didn’t seem to notice any change in her, even as she froze, her fingers twisting at the steering wheel. “Let’s get lunch again the next time I’m in New York, man. My treat next time.” He winked. She barely noticed.

She had caught him, a passing glimpse in the mirror, and _why in the everlasting_ fuck _did the Winter Soldier follow her here?_ Strike had seen little but the turn of his shoulder as he had ducked away, but he had _followed_ her. Followed the two of them.

She was furious.

“Have a good trip,” She bit out. “Say hi to Flicker for me.”

“For sure man. Bye!”

And he was gone, walking off towards the bus depot with a jaunty bounce to his stride.

She sat there, stock still, eyes on the mirror, and she wanted to _punch_ someone.

He had jeopardized everything with his presence. If he had been noticed following her, if the Winter Soldier was connected to their Railroad, if _Bucky Barnes_ was connected to her, well. She wouldn’t have just Hydra and SHIELD to worry about.

Captain America might just tear her door down himself.

She let out a deep hiss of an exhale and turned out of the parking lot. She would deal with this when she got home. Until then, well. She would manage. Just as she always had.


	6. Radio

He would beat her home, so she didn’t even try to rush to catch him. She knew that speeding down the street wasn’t going to do anything other than draw attention to her, so she drove as slow as possible without getting pulled over as she looked for a place to clear her head.

She stopped and got a coffee at some quaint local bakery, sat in one of the uncomfortable seats at the bench, and sipped her drink. She tried to figure out what she was going to say when she got home. It wasn’t like she _wanted_ to kick him to the curb, but she had to gather her thoughts. 

On one hand, he didn’t trust her. That didn’t surprise her- in fact, she expected it. The Winter Soldier couldn’t be expected to just up and forget all of his training, his past experiences, when put in such a secretive situation. She hadn’t told him anything, _couldn’t_ tell him anything without putting other people in danger, so of _course_ he had followed her.

On the other hand, if a Hydra agent had spotted him, or if Captain America had seen his once-best friend, her cover would be blown. If she was found out, most of the Railroad would have to dissolve. An entire organization would have to go underground and stop helping people, instead concentrating on keeping themselves alive. Kids like Friction would be left to their own devices, and without their help, would be at risk of being captured or experimented on.

Strike had pushed the Railroad to be as secretive as possible; going as far as using codenames to ferry Gifted from coast to coast—to give them new lives. And now, because she wasn’t careful, because she cared too much about a single person, a single cause, the whole thing could come down around their ears.

Her coffee was cold. She sighed, walking back up to the counter. “Two large coffees to go, please. One black, one with one sugar.”

She dumped her cold coffee in the trash and stuck her two new ones in a tray and walked out before realizing that she had picked up one for James. It sat innocently next to hers in the cup tray, as if it wasn’t a sign that she was going to try and reach out to him once more.

Strike sighed, leaning against her car door. _Well, shit._

-

She cracked the door open, balancing the drink tray against her stomach. It had been locked, so if he hadn’t beat her home, he had at least locked up behind himself- but there he was, sitting on the couch, _’A Clockwork Orange’_ open in his hands.

As if he hadn’t been following her around all day.

For a heartbeat, Strike doubted herself. What if she hadn’t seen him? What if she had just imagined it, his silhouette passing over the mirror? What if she was entirely off-base with the entire assumption?

“So,” She cleared her throat, and he looked up, over the back of the couch at her. “Wanna talk about your day?”

He looked at her, and he wasn’t ‘James’. The distant look in his eyes was cold and calculating, like she had once seen in the Winter Soldier. The Asset. His gaze was almost methodically, as if he was measuring how to take her down, how to escape the apartment. Then he blinked, and in that instant he was just James. Just a worn, tired man with smooth cheeks and hair that was too long to be fashionable. “You know.”

It wasn’t a question. She put the drinks down on the kitchen counter before slipping her boots off. At least he wasn’t going to try and lie to her. He could probably have gotten away with it, with how difficult it was to see into his mind. Even now, with him right in front of her, she got hardly any sort of reading off of him. It was like he possessed no personality, no preferences, no strong feelings, which left her with nothing. “I saw you in the rear view mirror at the depot. Just for a second. And before that, I sensed you when we were at Gab’s place. Honestly, I got lucky.” The truth burned on her tongue. She didn’t like admitting her weaknesses, that she wouldn’t have caught him, but her ego wasn’t too bruised. He was still the Winter Soldier. Trained for that sort of thing. Hunting. Tracking. _Killing._

“I was sloppy,” He spoke quietly, putting the book down. The corner of the page he was on had been dog-eared, bent inwards. 

“Yeah, well, sloppy or not, you still _followed_ me.” A bit of her annoyance, her frustration slipped into her voice. “Without telling me.”

“I had to know.” James growled, and a little of the Winter Soldier was back in his eyes. 

“You had to know _what_?” She hissed. “We both have secrets, James. If I’m not digging through your shit, I can’t have you digging through mine.” 

“I can’t take your word for everything,” He stood as he spoke, and she forgot just how _huge_ he was. The Winter Soldier. Under his jeans and sweatshirt, he was sturdy bones and thick ropes of muscle. He was steel and scar tissue, gritted teeth and sinew. He was a killer, trained for one purpose only, and she was _harboring_ him, hiding him like he was a stray cat.

She was holding her breath. She forced herself to let it out in a long, slow hiss. “You’re going to have to trust me on some things, James.” Strike said his name, the name he had given her, to try and ground him. To remind him that he wasn’t the Winter Soldier.

“You haven’t told me anything.” He took a step towards her, his voice barely a whisper under his breath. Strike forced herself to stand her ground, unwilling to move because if she did, she was going to break into a dead run right out the front door. “I don’t know who you work for. I don’t know where you sent that kid. I don’t know why you picked me up-“

His hands were gripped into fists at his sides, just out of arms reach for her. Strike looked down at his left hand, the steel plates clenched together to mimic tightened muscle over his knuckles. How fast could he, throttle her, squeeze the life out of her?

“I know.” She admitted, and she forced her eyes up, looking into the dead eyes of the Winter Soldier. “I have to protect them, though.”

“Who?” He growled, and the tone rumbled through her like thunder.

“Kids like Friction,” She said quietly. “People like you.”

He deflated. In that instant, it was like the fight had gone out of him with a breath. His shoulders sagged, fists loosened, and he looked _smaller_. Like James. Her heart thudded in her chest, loud enough that she could hear it echoing in her ears like a drum.

“Look,” She said, still trying to keep eye contact with him. They looked different now, not the steely grey-blue when he was the Soldier, the Asset. They were a pale blue when he shifted into James, softer. Sad. “I know. I’m sorry. I expected you to trust me without giving you much to go on. That was my fault.”

Silence. James Barnes looked at the floor between them, the few squares of linoleum that marked the few feet separating the two of them. He didn’t make any motion to show that he had heard her, but she kept trying.

“I’ll try to be more open,” She said, the strain in her voice thinly masked by a tone that was forcibly calm. “You can call the shots here, but you can’t follow me. I need to know if you have the potential of showing up on one of my jobs. I have to be able to plan for it.”

“You can’t work with unknown factors,” He intoned, and a little life came into his blue eyes. “The mission could go wrong if there is an unknown variable.”

“Exactly.” She took the opportunity to take a step towards him, and he _flinched_ , a twitch in his shoulder, his cheek, a tightening of the muscles there. Strike thought of how she would normally act, comfort someone else- pat their shoulder, hug them, muss their hair. All of those options seemed childish. If she touched him, he might just break her arm, and she couldn’t blame him. “I’ll try to be an open book, James, but I need you to be honest with me, too. Please.”

“I won’t compromise the mission,” He said quietly, mechanically, eyes still trained on the floor. 

Her anger evaporated out of her.

“I got you a coffee on the way home,” She said, and she plucked the cup out of the tray. Offered it to him, in the foot of space between them. 

He looked at it, and a little more of the Asset slipped from his eyes. When he looked from it, to her, something in her heart _hurt_. “I know you stopped there,” He whispered.

“Yeah,” She managed a small smile. “That’s alright. You take your coffee with a little sugar, right?”

He nodded, the gesture short, and he took the cup from her, wrapping the fingers of his flesh hand around the sides of the paper cup. He pressed it against his sternum, as if the warmth would seep into his skin, and he took a deep breath. Righted himself. When he looked at her again, the Asset was gone. Just James. Just a man with more pain than he knew to deal with. “Thank you,” He said, and though his voice was tense, it was sincere. 

“No problem.” Her smile broadened. This. This was why she had picked him up, out of the trash. Why she had risked taking in the man who had been the Winter Soldier. “Hey, you haven’t seen Star Wars, have you?”

He blinked. “No. What’s a Star Wars?”

“Well, James,” She stepped away, moving past him, around him. “ _That_ is something that needs fixing.”

-

“Why did they call it Episode Four if they didn’t put three ones out before it?”

Strike plopped down on the couch beside him, the opening crawl of the first Star Wars movie slipping up the screen in front of them. She folded her legs beneath her, pulling the bowl of popcorn into her lap. Beside her, James sat, leaning against the back of the couch. His knees were spread, his arms at his sides. He was the very picture of a man who did not care about what was on the screen in front of him.

“Long story,” She eventually said, scooping some popcorn into her hand. “There’s three movies before this, but they came out afterwards.”

“Shouldn’t we watch those ones first?”

The innocence in his words made her smile. “Nah,” She said, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. “Later, sure, but trust me. This is the best one to start with.”

James looked at her, brows furrowed, lips pursed, and she wondered how exactly she could explain the colossal disappointment that was most people’s reaction to the prequel movies. 

“Trust me,” She said, grinning, motioning at the screen with one buttery, salty hand. “You should be reading that.”

He snorted. She chuckled. It all seemed so quaint. As if she just had a particularly grumpy roommate. Barnes looked back at the screen, seemingly resigning himself to watching whatever crap was coming up on the screen. His distaste was obvious- but as the scene panned down over a planet, the Star Destroyer swooping in, his eyes went wide.

Strike tried not to laugh. That would give him the wrong idea, that she was laughing _at_ him, at his wonder, and she wasn’t. Seeing someone experience things for the first time- good things, _fun_ things, things she enjoyed herself— it was the best feeling known to man. Slowly, as the movie crept on, he started leaning forward, elbows propped up on his knees, closer to the screen. He would look over at her when he had a question, and she paused the movie, glancing at him expectantly.

“Why was Obi-Wan in hiding?” He asked, brows furrowed but eyes wide, blue and innocent as he worked through the movie. 

“Um,” Strike dug her fingers back into the popcorn, trying to think of the easiest way to explain it without spoiling anything. “Well, he’s a Rebellion sympathizer. He probably didn’t want to be caught by the Imperials.”

Barnes scrunched up his nose, obviously disliking her answer. “Then he should have been with the Rebellion, not hiding out in… whatever planet this is.”

“Tatooine.”

“Tatooine.” He frowned. “If he’d been with the Rebellion, Luke wouldn’t have gotten caught up in this.”

“Maybe it’s for the better,” She tried to explain. “Luke needed a reason to leave the farm and become a hero.”

James’ frown turned into more of a grimace. “Just feels like this could have all been avoided.”

-

“I don’t like Han.”

She paused the movie again, looking at James. He wasn’t looking at her, just up at the view of Harrison Ford’s face on the screen. He looked like he smelled something a few weeks off. 

“I like Han,” She said, smirking. “He’s smart.”

“Why is he in debt to a space-slug?” He frowned. “That’s not smart.”

-

She was watching his face, not the movie, when Obi-Wan was cut down.

His eyes had gone wide, and if she looked just a _little_ closer, she could have seen his mouth drop open, just a hair. He looked at her, and the expression on his face was nothing but _offended_.

“Why?” He sounded almost accusatory. “He just gave up.” This was the closest Barnes had come to raising his voice since she had met him, speaking loudly enough that their neighbors might be able to hear the rumble of his voice through their shared wall. 

She shrugged, smiling. 

It seemed to do nothing more than fuel his rage at the cinematic event. He turned back to the movie, a dark scowl on his face. “Stupid,” He said. 

-

“I like Han,” He said quietly, as the Millennium Falcon swept onto the screen, saving the day at the last minute. “But he’s an idiot.”

-

“Well, that was Star Wars,” Strike said, turning down the volume as the credits rolled. “Thoughts?”

James was trying to get the last little flecks of popcorn out from the bottom of the bowl. “It was good.”

She stood to take the disc out, and then shot him a ‘look’, one brow raised. “Good?”

He glanced up at her, and then back down to the popcorn bowl. “Well, not the cat’s meow or anything but. Good.” 

Strike shook her head, ejecting the disc. “Well, I’ve got the next movie too, if you didn’t want to do anything else tonight.”

His head shot up so fast, she wondered if he had strained anything with the action. “I could watch it,” He said, refusing to admit that he actually _wanted_ to.

“Cool,” She cracked a grin, letting her brow fall. “I’ll make some more popcorn too. Mind grabbing some blankets from the bedroom?”

He shuffled off, and she watched him go, her grin fading to a small, sad smile. He just seemed so _young_. Barring the time spent in cryo, he couldn’t be older than thirty, but he had missed out on so much. With the majority of his memories missing, it was as if he had missed out on the most basic of things: entertainment, food; even just talking to another human being about something that wasn’t a mission, or a subset of a mission. He had said more about Star Wars over the past two hours than he had during the entire time she had known him, and actual emotion slipped into his words.

He hadn’t actually _cared_ about anything in so long, that he didn’t seem to remember _how_ to.

He came out of her bedroom, blankets and pillows piled in his arms. She started, wondering how long she had been standing there.

“Oops,” She said sheepishly. “I should get that popcorn started.”

“Yes.” He nodded, dumping the contents of his arms onto the couch in a heap. 

There were so many faces to this man- James. Barnes. The Winter Soldier. The Asset. Bucky. She didn’t know who he really was yet, who this man was becoming, but sitting there, watching old movies with him, well, she felt like she was getting closer to that truth.

Hopefully he wouldn’t run off before he found himself.

-

He liked ‘Empire Strikes Back’ more than he had liked the first movie. When Han had been frozen in carbonite, something in the back of his mind just… turned off. Filed the scene away for later contemplation. Frozen solid, unable to move, or age, incapable of defending yourself- he shivered, watching the scene, and he felt Strike’s eyes on him. He ignored her, leaning forward in his seat as the movie continued.

_It doesn’t matter._ James blinked away the memory and wrapped the quilt around his shoulders, pulling it a little more closer to himself. _I’m not going back. That’s not going to happen again._

He still liked it, though, and by the time the movie was over, Strike was reclining on her half of the couch, pulling her hair loose from her braid, combing her fingers through it before it became a tangled mess. He watched her from the corner of his eye, picking at the remainders of the popcorn, the rolling credits reflected in her slate-grey eyes. She seemed relaxed around him, as if a few hours prior, he _hadn’t_ been close to wrapping his fingers around her throat.

As if she didn’t know that he was the Winter Soldier.

She hadn’t said it. She hadn’t called him by name, but it was impossible that she _didn’t_ know by now. She knew enough about Hydra and SHIELD that she must know about his existence, if not more classified information. She had seen his arm, she knew what he was capable of- and she had seen into his mind. Not entirely, but enough to know.

He wasn’t sure if that set him on edge, or if it comforted him. She had stuck with him, even knowing who he was, who was looking for him. _What I’ve done._

Her feet were an inch away from the outside of his left thigh on the couch, socked and peeking out from under her own blanket. She hadn’t touched him- not since dropping him in her bed the first time. It had been obvious- no brushing in the hallway, no feet poking at his thigh. 

James took a deep breath and shifted on the couch, bringing his feet up as he leaned against the arm opposite the one Strike was lounging against. In one quick, fluid motion, the sides of his feet, wrapped in a blanket, bumped against hers.

Human contact. The first time he had actually touched someone without-

_He didn’t know what year it was. He was in a bedroom, window open. Curtains flapping in the wind. A hotel, somewhere fancy. Expensive._

_He pulled the knife from the target’s ribs and wiped it on the thigh of his pants. His boots, his knees, his hands were wet with blood. The target let out a slow, gurgling breath, his last as he went utterly still._

_His natural hand, even through the glove, was cold, sticky with drying blood. He flexed the fingers on his hand, but left the blood where it was. Mission control would take care of it._

James squeezed his eyes shut. He only remembered a smattering of… anything. His time as the Winter Soldier. Anything before that. His targets had been wiped from his memory, his acts had been wiped, but no wipe was perfect. Shattered pieces still remained, blurred around the edges.

“You okay?”

He cracked his eyes open. Strike looked at him from where she sat on the couch, head tilted. Her hair was loose, swept around to spill over one shoulder in a dark wave.

_No._

“Yes.” He looked away, back to the credits. 

Her feet were warm, even through the blankets.

_Eventually. Yes._


	7. Tuesday

Strike didn’t have any jobs for almost a whole month.

Apparently, she didn’t need to. The Railroad provided for its own. The apartment was being rented to her for cheap by a sympathizer. A lump sum was deposited into her account every month by some of their men. Apparently they had a Gifted on their side with incredible luck- he had won the lottery a few years past, and continued making their spending cash through more of that luck. Scratch cards, bingo, anything to fund their field agents. Another Gifted owned a few franchise locations of a restaurant through the country. There was plenty of money around, one just had to know how to get a hold of it.

The space between jobs was long, only broken up by what she called her ‘Tuesday Bar Runs’. Those were the nights where other Gifted could go out to find her. They didn’t know about her apartment, or any other personal information about her, but if they needed her, she would be at the Tap House on Tuesday nights.

Otherwise, the time in between was hers. And now, his.

They went grocery shopping. She had tried to nudge him into picking out some items, to add to her cart, but he didn’t bother. Every time she turned to him, holding a can of artichokes, or a box of crackers, a bag of white bread or a bag of brown, he shrugged. Sometimes he grunted noncommittally.

Honestly, he didn’t really care. Everything tasted good to him. The small, flat burgers from that chain restaurant with the ‘M’ were good. Her leftovers were good. A glass of cold water was good. 

Every time he shrugged, she sighed, and just put it in the cart. 

She took him to the library. He took out three books on history, accounts on the Second World War and the ensuing aftermath. After finishing their contents before the day was out, she showed him the _internet_ , and a whole new world was opened up.

He still went back to the library. He still preferred the feeling of a book in his hands—he felt like he could trust it more. She mentioned that anyone could change websites, alter their texts, and though most of what they said was true, there were always bits of misinformation and misrepresentation.

He would not be lied to again.

_Your work has shaped the century._

The two of them stayed clear of malls and shopping centers, but when the next Tuesday rolled around, she asked if he wanted to go to the pub with her. Sit. See if anyone showed up. Nobody did, not usually, but she had made a tradition of it.

He went along. Not that sitting in a pub for most of the night sounded appealing to him- actually, he was hoping to get home and watch the next Star Wars movie- but he still wasn’t comfortable with letting her out of his sight.

They sat in the dim light of the Tap House, a gin in her hand and a beer in his, and she talked.

“I founded the Railroad about eight years ago with a few friends,” She said quietly, leaned forward in her seat. He mirrored her actions, elbows on the table, drink protected between. The bartender had barely given them a second glance after serving their drinks, and so they sat alone. “We all had powers that were vital to its founding- I can work with memories. We had a lady who could go invisible. A guy who can walk through walls. A woman old enough to be my mother who could see the future. We were lucky to meet under good circumstances, and from there, well,” Strike swirled her drink in her glass, leaving small bubbles clinging to the sides. “It’s evolved into the Railroad we have today.”

He sat there, quiet as she talked. He was good at staying silent, listening to mission objectives and directives, but there was something about this moment he didn’t want to change. He finished his beer and ordered another, even if he couldn’t actually _get_ drunk anymore. There was something familiar in putting back a drink, in sitting with someone and just listening to them ramble; nothing that he could place, no specific memory, but nostalgia washed over him all the same.

“I pushed for the security levels we have today. Code names, passwords, that sort of thing.” She chuckled, the sound soft and low. “It’s what’s kept us alive. Only very few people know what operatives we have in place across the country, and even then we don’t tell each other our real names, or our pasts. My main job is meeting with other operatives and making sure that they don’t remember too much about each other, and making sure our people don’t get noticed.”

It made sense, she couldn’t be everywhere at once. So, the security measures. It was something he would have done, had he been in her shoes. 

“Usually, my jobs are quick. Pick up a Gifted, or an Inhuman from a Scout- people who reach out to them, make first contact- and take them to where they need to go. I wipe the memory of the Scout so they don’t remember their real name or face, and establish a code name with them. Gab sets them up with new identification, a new life, and I drop them off at a bus depot, or an airport, and they get sent to a quieter location. New York is a hotspot for danger.”

He nodded slowly, still quiet, looking into the depths of his brown bottle. The beer was cheap, watery, but good enough to keep him sated and relaxed.

“Sometimes things gets more dangerous. Hydra agents poking too closely, that sort of thing. Usually I just wipe their memories and send them on their way. Killing isn’t really my style, and I wouldn’t be able to keep them off of me if the rest of Hydra found out about what was going on.”

“You’re familiar with Hydra,” He said quietly, and next to him, she _bristled_.

“It’s a long story,” She said softly.

“You know my story,” James looked at her out of the corner of his eye, speaking into the mouth of his bottle. _You know I’m the Winter Soldier._

She swallowed, lifted her glass to her lips. When she lowered it, it was empty. She raised a hand, signalling the bartender for another. “Yeah,” She murmured, barely audible under the low music of the bar. “That’s… not really fair, is it.”

The drink was dropped off, and she drank half of it again before starting to speak.

“My parents were a part of SHIELD when I was young,” Strike didn’t look at him as she spoke, not like she normally did. Her eyes were focused on her glass, on the slice of lemon floating in her drink. “And when I hit puberty, I started showing… powers. Reading memories. That kind of thing.”

“You told them.” 

“Yeah,” She nodded. “At first they didn’t believe me, but when I could tell my mom what her high school sweetheart looked like, well, they started getting the picture. I didn’t have control over it back then either- not like I do now. I saw a lot of stuff that I didn’t want to see.”

He could imagine. Parents working for SHIELD would have seen all sorts of terrible things. Bringing them home for a teenage daughter to see…

“I couldn’t control when I looked into someone’s past. The weirdest things would trigger it-“ She chuckled, a mirthless sound. “And sometimes I couldn’t stop it. I would go hours just seeing visions, reliving parts of people’s past, and my parents had no idea how they could help me. It was only when Hydra stepped in that they started making any progress.”

There it was. The kicker. That was Hydra’s modus operandi, find people they could twist, or change, turn them to their ideals by any means necessary.

Barnes forced himself to slacken his grip on his beer before he shattered the bottle.

“There were experiments. Mostly humane. I got an implant when I was around fifteen to help control my powers,” Strike tapped her right eyebrow, finger resting on her temple. “Right here. Still hurts when I try to do things I wasn’t meant to do.”

“Wasn’t meant to do?”

“See current things. Feel what other people are thinking. Minor telepathy stunts like that. They should be impossible- my powers are only with memories, but this-“ Another tap. “-helps me do it.”

_So._ James leaned back in his seat, looking at her. She looked… smaller, now, bent over her drink, eyes vacant. The smirk on her face was painted on, without actual emotion. “How did you get away?” His voice was low, low enough that she almost didn’t hear him, and when she did, her shoulders jolted _up_ as she started.

“I was nineteen,” She spoke carefully. “I’d hated Hydra for a long time by then, but I was always told that my implant wouldn’t work if I left their control range. I was scared of going crazy, of being unable to control myself. One day I just decided that it was worth the risk, and… bam. Wiped the minds of the scientists tied to me and just walked out the door.”

She couldn’t be younger than twenty seven, then. The Asset did the math in the back of his head. She looked tired for being so young. The bags under her eyes didn’t belong to a woman in her twenties.

“Your parents?” He asked.

_”Tell Steve that we can give him a lift to the funeral.”_

“Don’t know,” She said, and finally, she looked him in the eye. All that he associated with her- the cold, collected persona, the amused teacher, the hardworking woman, was gone in an instant. Strike looked tired. She looked lonely. “Never went after them. If they’re looking for me, well, I’ve covered my tracks well enough that they can’t find anything.”

_”Oh, Jimmy, why did they have to draft you?”_

“I saw you, back at Hydra.”

He snapped out of his haze, suddenly realizing that she had turned it around. That he had become the subject. She had never made a statement that she had known about him, no matter how obvious he had made his past, so he hadn’t expected her to.

“You did?” He didn’t remember seeing her at all. Of course, he remembered so little from that time, and all that he did remember was pain. Pain, and training. Electricity on his fingertips, between his ears, blacking out his vision- He smothered the panic rising in him, forced himself to look at Strike, to remember where, _when_ he was.

“Once in the-“ She paused, and then forged ahead. “In the tank. They took me there as a sort of threat. Preventative measures. You know, ‘if you run away, we’ll send the Winter Soldier to bring you home’, they said.” She sighed and downed the rest of her drink, clicking her teeth together as she set the glass down, empty. “And once before you were sent on a mission. Just in passing. I thought you were a ghost.” Strike looked back at him again, and this time she wasn’t smiling at all. “I was terrified when I realized who you were.”

He believed it. He had been sent to dispatch rogue Hydra agents before. It could have been a real threat that they might have sent him after someone like her- but they hadn’t. He probably would have been able to catch her, too.

But if he had found her, if he had brought her back, would they risk her making him remember? That was probably why he was never sent to recover her. They didn’t want to take the risk.

“But, after all that, I tracked down a few other people who had ran from Hydra, and here we are.” She spread her hands out on the table, and he suddenly realized that somewhere along the line, Strike had become a little drunk. “Poetic.”

“Ironic,” He muttered into his beer, unwilling to truly face the unspoken words between them. _You understand. Not entirely, but you were there._

“You want another beer?”

“No,” He said, pushing his empty bottle away from himself. 

“Well, I want another drink.” She nodded to the bartender once more- this was her fifth drink tonight. Talking about her past must have hurt something in her, made her retreat into her shell. “Easier to forget again.”

“Can you do that?”

“Huh?”

He waited until the bartender passed through, dropping off a drink, picking up his bottle. Then, he leaned back in. “Make yourself forget?”

“No,” She said, and she downed the drink in one go before continuing. “No, I can’t. Sometimes I wish I could, but… no.”

The corners of her grey eyes were tight with pain. The ice cubes in her glass rattled as she set it down. Strike was quiet for a long time, watching the bartender putter back and forth, cleaning glasses, polishing bottles. He watched _her_ , the glint of the bar light in her eyes, the way she chewed on her lower lip as she fell into thought, and he wondered how he looked in _her_ eyes.

He only had one more question for her, but he didn’t know if he could ask it. Not yet. It stood on the tip of his tongue, and he opened his mouth to-

_Can you make me remember?_

He didn’t know if it was possible. Could she only see things that he himself remembered? Or could she dig up relics of his past, find out who James Buchanan Barnes _really_ was?

He wanted to remember. He wanted to know if what he had read was true. He wanted to know that Hydra didn’t _make_ him, craft him to be a weapon with a false face and a fake name. That he had been human once- but there were other memories too. What Hydra had done to him. He remembered little of his time there, but whatever they _had_ done to him had left him with these strong impulses. He still felt the fear of not completing his mission, because not completing his mission meant-

James shut his mouth. He wasn’t ready to even ask that question. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“Well, I don’t think anyone’s gonna show up tonight,” She said, fishing around for her wallet. She tucked a few bills under her drink and motioned for the bartender to notice. “Let’s head on home.”

“You’ve had enough to drink?”

She let out a sharp exhale, something like a chuckle. “If I have much more, I’m gonna have a pretty rough morning, James.”

He almost smiled, standing beside her as she pulled herself to her feet. “Then we had better get going.”

She stumbled on the doorframe on the way out, leaning lightly on the side as she regained her balance. He had reached out, just as a reflex, fingers freezing just an inch away from the back of her jacket. He had stopped, just shy of catching her, the gloved fingers on his steel hand twitching in thin air.

James retracted his hand, dropping his arm back to his side as he heard her faint chuckle drift back. “Oops,” She said, voice light.

“You drank too much,” His voice had an accusatory tone to it as the two of them stepped outside. The walk was covered in snow, winter having finally decided to hit and stick around for a while. He crunched through, his boots leaving large, dark imprints against the snow. 

“I guess you’ll have to make sure I get home okay, then,” Strike kicked the snow out before her with each step, the toes of her boots dragging on the ground. She walked with an off gait- usually so quick with her movements, she dawdled now. James had to walk slowly to stay behind her, uncomfortable with taking the lead even when he knew how to get back to her place. He needed to always keep her in sight when they were out together.

He didn’t respond, silently watching her drag her feet through the snow. This was the first time he had seen her seem so… shaken. Usually she seemed so calm, so together. Seeing her like this made him… well, it made him a little sad. He felt like he had pushed her into talking about things that she wasn’t ready to talk about quite yet, especially with him. 

Especially with him.

She stopped suddenly, turning in the snow. She left a half-circle imprinted against the white as she dragged her foot around with her movement. Strike looked at him then, and there was something familiar reflected in the slate-grey of her eyes. Something lost, and lonely, something he saw in himself the few times he worked up the courage to look in the mirror. He swallowed, hard, meeting her gaze.

“I’m glad I found you, y’know,” She said, and _that_ hadn’t been what he had expected her to say.

“What?” James blinked, his back straightening at her words.

“I’m serious,” She said, and she _smiled_ , bright enough that he felt the corner of his lips twitch. Whatever she was, it was contagious. She looked younger, in that moment, more like the twenty-something woman she was, not the Railroad Operative. Not the ex-Hydra experiment. Just a woman, dark of hair and bright of eye, with an honest smile. “It’s gonna be tough, but I don’t regret it. Not for a moment.”

Something in his chest flopped over at her words, and James smiled back. 

“There we go,” She said brightly. “You look younger when you smile, you know.”

“You do too,” He said, and she laughed.

In that moment, his worries weren’t quite gone, but they weren’t at the forefront of his mind. They still had to be careful, quiet, his hand gloved and firmly in his pocket, but on that walk home, he actually felt like a normal person. Just James. 

“C’mon, James,” Strike turned back, the ends of her coat fluttering around her thighs as she twirled. “Let’s have a snack and get some shuteye.”

“Sure, cookie,” He replied, smile still stuck on his face. He spoke without thinking, words coming as reflex, but he caught her glance back over her shoulder at him. He shrugged, and her smile softened. 

He could get used to this.


	8. Zola

They continued like this for a while, dancing around the issues of their sense of self and what that made them today. Strike didn’t mention anything else about her past, or her powers, and likewise, James kept quiet on his past identities. As far as either of them were concerned, they didn’t need to. They bickered more as the weeks went on- nothing serious, just small arguments, almost just for the sake of _having_ an argument. Who got the bed at night, and who ended up on the couch. Who had to make coffee in the morning. Who would check that the front door was locked at night. James found himself smiling more often- not _often_ , mind, but moreso, and usually at their good-natured ‘spats’. He let his stubble grow back out, hiding away the face of someone who wasn’t quite familiar, not yet, and slowly came to terms with the ‘him’ he saw in the mirror. 

Their first major setback was about a month after he had started living with her.

Strike had picked up a phone call from someone in the Railroad, and she had excused herself to her bedroom to take the call. He could hear her talking from the kitchen, where he was attempting to, by himself, make breakfast. He had been watching her nearly every morning, mentally trying to take notes, to _learn_ something new, and today was the day he had decided, well, why not?

All by himself. Creating something. He would be more proud of himself if it wasn’t for such a stupid reason.

“Hello?” Her voice echoed in through the apartment. She wasn’t making an effort to hide her conversation, having apparently decided that it would be easier to keep things as open as possible between the two of them. He appreciated it, the apparent show of honesty.

James, curious as he was, pushed his attention to the kitchen. Beside him sat a carton of eggs, a loaf of brown bread, a stick of butter mashed on a plate. Breakfast. Wouldn’t be too hard. He must have cooked breakfast before. Had he cooked before? Did he have someone to cook for him, all those years ago?

“Yeah, I can talk. Something wrong?”

He put his flesh hand over the pan he had been working with, hovering above to test if it was hot yet. Satisfied, he scooped a lump of butter up and tossed it into the pan, watching intently as it fizzled away into brown goo.

“What’s her power?”

Next, he cracked an egg, rattling the pan as he nearly spilled egg white across the stovetop. It somehow made it into the pan, quickly turning from clear, to white. He cocked his head, trying to catch the half of the conversation coming through the other end of the phone.

“Oh, that’s…” He heard her hiss in the other room, trying to find the right word. “That’s a tough one. Are you sure she isn’t one of theirs?”

Next, James opened the bag of bread and tossed two of the slices into the toaster. He clicked the panel down, and turned back to his egg, flipping it before realizing that the toaster wasn’t toasting much of anything. _Right._ They had unplugged it to plug in the coffee maker that morning. He sighed, yanking the coffee maker plug out by the wire, then grabbing the plug for the toaster with his left hand.

“But if she is, that could compromise the entire… No, yeah, I know. We have to risk it. I just think there might be a better way-“

His mistake was holding the plug by the metal prongs. The pressure sensors in his metal hand told him that he was holding it, but not the texture of what he was holding. His attention turned back to his egg, just about ready to come out of the pan, as he reached forward to plug the toaster in.

He shocked himself.

It was minor. His hand snapped back out of reflex, dropping the plug, but he could _feel_ it, up his false arm, across his chest, the quick, hot burn of electricity. His heart stuttered, and for a moment his vision went black-

_”Again.”_

He screamed as pain laced down his fingers, through his body. His heart was racing a million miles an hour, even as he was strapped down, stationary, unable to move. The bit in his mouth tasted like blood, like bile. It kept his teeth from cracking as he bit _down_ gnashing his teeth together.

_”Again.”_

His scream choked off into a strangled sob as, again, the machine worked, pulsing electricity through his brain. His world was dark, black around him- his eyes were squeezed shut against the pain, as if pretending that the cause of it didn’t exist. The Asset forced his eyes open, wild and feral, and _he_ stared back.

The Asset didn’t know his name. It had been lost somewhere in the dredges of his old memories, of pain and fire and thunder. The Asset didn’t _need_ a name. This was the man that hurt him when a mission went wrong. When he didn’t complete the directives. When he started to remember, started to _question_ -

_”Ah-ah-ah. He vill lose consciousness.”_

The scientist’s voice echoed in the small confines of the room, distant even as the scientist stood right in front of him, close enough for his breath to gust over the sweat-shined skin of the Asset’s face. He smiled, sickly against his pale skin.

_”Ze treatment is vorking. Increase ze voltage.”_

“No-“ The Asset spoke- the first word spoken in a long time, and the last thing he saw was the arch to his brow as his vision exploded into white light and burning agony once again.

_”Listen to me.”_

He was _listening_ , God, why wouldn’t it just _stop_?

There was something pushing at his shoulders, squeezing, somehow more real than the electricity, the room, the mocking face of his torturer himself. It cut through the pain, the fire behind his eyes, giving him clarity.

_”Take deep breaths, James.”_

James. The Asset didn’t know a ‘James’. He wasn’t a ‘James’. He was the Asset. The Winter Soldier, they had called him. Using a different name-

He had called himself ‘Bucky’. 

That was why they were doing this to him. The Asset had called himself ‘Bucky’.

_”I need you to tell me where you are, James.”_

It was a trick. If he responded, they would just continue the torture. Pretending that he had a name- no. He couldn’t. He didn’t have a name. He was the Asset. He gritted his teeth through the rubber of the bit- there was no bit. Not this time. Just the metallic tang of blood in his mouth.

Something was burning in the background.

_”C’mon, James. I know you can. You just need to think._

The voice was female. Strained. The Asset didn’t know of any female scientists assigned to his care. The image of the scientist blurred into a woman with a strong nose, a dark braid of black hair that was pulled over her shoulder. She was leaning over him, hands on his shoulders, caught between holding him away and trying to shake him awake. The two were disconnected in his mind- _He was in a chair, he wasn’t in a chair. He was leaning against a stove. She was kneeling in front of him, both of them on the floor, she was standing over him as he was strapped to his chair-_

_“Where are you?”_ She asked, but her lips weren’t moving with her words. Her voice echoed in his head all the same, though, clear even in his confusion.

He opened his mouth to speak, but the room around him was foggy. White. Plain, but not the surgical cleanliness of the operating room. The nauseating smell of burning butter pulled him free. 

“Your apartment,” He said, and his moment of clarity expanded. It was like dunking his head under cold water, reality crashing through his haze.

She nodded, but she didn’t smile. Her expression was tight, her voice was thin, strained. _“That’s right. Who am I?”_ Her grip was tight on him, even through the thickness of his sweater, even to the unforgiving metal of his left arm.

“You told me to call you ‘Strike’,” He said, and he furrowed his brow. “You never told me your real name.”

_“No,”_ She said, glancing down. _“I didn’t. And who are you?”_

The Asset paused. Opened his mouth. “James. Barnes.” The name tasted foreign on his tongue.

_“That’s right. Now, James. Can you let go of my throat?”_

Looking down was hard, but as the experimentation room faded into nothing but a memory, his artificial hand came into view. His fingers were wrapped around the soft skin of Strike’s throat- pressure sensors told him that he was dangerously close to cutting off her air supply and causing potentially permanent damage. Immediately he let go, unclenching his fingers and pulling his hand back, looking down at it as if he had been burned. White bits of plaster and paint were clinging to the joints of his fingers, speckled over the metallic overcoat.

Strike cleared her throat and reached up with one hand, gingerly touching her throat. It would bruise. Her other hand was still behind him, massaging his back, pushing him towards her and away from the stove behind him.

They were both on the floor of her kitchen. He sat, legs splayed before him, arms fallen into his lap. Strike was kneeling on top of him, his right leg between her knees. She had let go of his left arm, hand reflexively curling around her throat to protect it, but she still gripped his right shoulder with an almost stubborn determination.

His eggs were burning. That’s what that smell was.

“Okay, that’s better,” Her lips moved for the first time, her voice soft, and he didn’t know if it was because he had hurt her or if it was because she was trying to keep him calm. “Alright. You’re safe. It’s safe here. Do you want to get up?”

He nodded, fast and jerky, and she pulled her hand from his shoulder and offered it to him, palm up. Unthreatening. He moved to take it with his left hand, thought better of it, and put his flesh hand in hers.

“Up we go,” She grunted, and she pulled him to his feet. Her hand was clammy in his, fingers cold and twined with his. He gripped tight, afraid that if he let go, he would end up _back there_ -

“Walk with me,” Strike said, and her voice was grounding. Reality. This was real. This was happening right now. The fear in his gut, cold and clenching, was nothing but a product of his mind. He let her pull him into movement, walking down the hall to the front door, and then back. Pacing up and down the limited space of the apartment. She took him to the window and threw it open, letting cold winter air mist inside. It was like a slap in the face, anchoring him, and James took a few quick, sharp breaths. It was cold enough to leave his throat burning from exposure. 

“My egg is burning,” He mumbled, the first words he had said since he had come out of the pain and terror that was his past. 

“Yeah, it is,” She let out a wheezing laugh, punctuated by clearing her throat. “It’s alright, you can try again after. I’ve got lots of eggs.”

“I hurt you,” He whispered. He tugged on her hand, turning her to face him. 

Red, swollen marks were already appearing across her throat, the lines harsh and wide. Some of the skin had been pinched between the shifting plates of his fingers, leaving darker lines of patches of burst blood vessels webbed across her throat. 

“It’ll heal,” She said, and she shrugged. As if it was as simple as that.

How was she so calm? He had nearly killed her. Again. _I don’t do that anymore._

“Can we head over to the stove?” She asked. “I’d like to turn the burner off.”

“Okay,” He murmured, as if he could deny her much of _anything_ right now. She pulled him along, away from the window, towards the stove. It was only now that he noticed that the handle of the stove door had been broken clean off. He must have hit it on his way down, broke it under his weight.

To the right of the stove sat the toaster. Behind it, the wall had a hole punched clear into the plaster- a hole roughly the same size as James’ left fist.

He looked down at his hand, at the plaster and paint that had chipped off and stuck in his joints, and he felt a lump rise up in his throat.

With quick, efficient movements, Strike turned the burner off with her free right hand, removing the pan and its black, smoking remnant of once-food. She dumped the whole thing right into the sink and turned the water on. It hissed loudly, streaking dark smoke into the apartment, and the only saving grace right then was that the smoke detector didn’t go off.

“Do you want to tell me what you saw?” She asked, and the question was so _innocent_ that it hurt.

He wanted to grin. To laugh. To make light of the situation. He could still taste blood and bile in his mouth, the back of his throat. 

“Zola,” He said, and the name tasted like acid on his tongue. “He… made me.”

Strike turned away from the sink, and looking at her was hard now that she bore marks from his own carelessness across her throat. “He didn’t ‘make’ you, James.”

“He made the Winter Soldier,” His voice was hollow. He looked down at his feet. He had started walking around her apartment barefoot a week back. Now, it felt like foolishness. “I- I electrocuted myself. Tried to plug in the toaster. They used to- to wipe me. When I remembered. Or fought back. Or… or just thought.” Remembering had been the worst. The feeling of being strapped down, repeating names he had recalled, places he had been to, over and over in his head in a pitiful attempt to cling to _anything_. It all slipped away from him in the end. They would put him into cryo and everything would just… wash away in the unrelenting cold, until there was nothing but ice.

“Hey-“ Strike tugged on his hand. Her fingers were thin. Her hand was small, folded in his own. James looked down, turning her hand over in his own. There was a scar over the back of her wrist, just a small nick, white against the deep tan of her skin.

“I can’t-“ He choked on his own words. “I don’t want to be that. I don’t want to be him anymore.”

She looked at him for a long moment, expressionless, until she tugged him towards her once more. As if he hadn’t been strangling her a few minutes ago, as if he hadn’t put a hole in her wall, she put her arm around his waist and she hugged him, pressing against his chest, ducking her head under his chin.

James stood stock-still for a moment. Before today, barring brushed feet under blankets, brushing past him in hallways, before her hands on his shoulders, her hand in his, everything that could be explained away by ‘just an accident’- nobody had touched him unless it was to hurt him, or to heal him. He couldn’t _remember_ what it was like to be touched just for the sake of being close, for the sake of comfort. He could feel her breathing against him, the slow rise and fall of her chest, and he realized that he was still breathing too fast, leaving his heart hammering in his throat.

Slowly, he slipped his fingers from hers, and when she realized that he wasn’t running away, she looped her other arm in a mirror around his waist, her fingers gripping handfuls of his sweater at his back. As if he was worried he was going to scare her off, he carefully wrapped his arms around her shoulders, turned his nose down to the crown of her head, and James forced himself to take in a deep, ragged breath.

She used the same shampoo that he did, a nearly-scentless off-brand, but right then, it was the most comforting thing in the world to smell. It grounded him- scent, touch, hearing her breathing, feeling the faint gusts of her breath brush over the front of his shirt- until Zola’s face was a faint, distant memory. 

“You are not the Winter Soldier,” She finally spoke, her words muffled against his chest. “You are not the Asset. If you were, I would be dead, and you wouldn’t be here.”

He squeezed tighter. He felt her breath hitch under the pressure, and he forced himself to relax his grip on her, but she gave no sign of letting go just yet.

“You can be whoever you _want_ to be, James,” She shifted, moving her grip down to the small of his back. “And I will do anything in my power to help you be that person. I promise.”

“I’m scared,” He whispered into her hair, and the admission of his fear was enough to blur his vision, to swell the back of his throat. He was. He had felt terror, distant and numb, ever since he could remember, but this was fresh. This was real. This wasn’t fear of pain, or death, or torture at the hands of Hydra. This was fear that he would be that weapon once more. Mindless, in the same way a gun was mindless. A tool to be used, and then cast away, reforged into something new, more useful. _This_ fear was real, loud and roaring at the back of his mind, deafening in its urgency.

“Me too,” She admitted, and somehow that made it easier. “But I’m still going to keep fighting.”

And there it was. An unspoken promise. Strike pulled back, her hands still tangled in the back of his shirt, and she looked up at him. There were tears in her grey eyes, even as she smiled up at him.

Deep in the back of his mind, the Asset created a new mission statement, the first time it had truly stirred since declaring Steve Rogers to be his mission.

_Mission: Remember. Everything. Eventually._

_Secondary Mission: Protect Strike._

“Okay,” He said, and he swallowed the bright, burning fear at the back of his throat, swallowed it down to his gut and smothered it.


	9. Metis

“Where are you going?”

It was the day after the toaster incident. The two of them had spent the rest of the day on the couch, watching half of a television series about the creation and past of the known universe. No sudden, loud noises. No pain. No death. Just philosophical questions about the meaning of life. The two of them had curled up on their own ends of the couch, but halfway through the last episode, Strike had fallen asleep, her legs tangled with his own under their shared blanket.

James had decided to spend the night out there, rather than risk waking her by moving.

“Oh, shit-“ Strike whirled, one boot on, one boot off. She looked up at him, and squeezed her eyes shut. “ _Fuck_ , I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you-“

“Tell me what?” He growled, annoyed that he had woken up to her clambering off of the couch, a crick in his neck and one leg asleep. He had followed her to the door and he watched, hurt that she hadn’t told him about… whatever it was.

“I have a job,” She said with a long-suffering sigh. “I got the call yesterday when you-“

He remembered. “I heard you.”

“Okay,” Strike struggled to pull her other boot on, hopping until she leaned against the closed door behind her. “Anyway. I’ve gotta go do that, now.” 

Wordlessly, James reached for his own boots.

“Oh no, no. You’re not coming with me-“

“Yes, I am,” He replied, expression blank. 

“James,” She groaned, raking a hand through her hair and then having to dislodge it out of her braid. “We can’t just- I can’t-“

He looked at her, silent. One boot held in his hand. She looked him in the eye, bold, grey against blue, and eventually, she gave.

Her shoulders slumped. “ _Fine_. Go get some socks on. And a hair tie. You need to do something about that mop on your head.”

It _was_ getting hard to see through. His hair hung thick and long enough that she couldn’t see his smug expression through his curtain of hair.

When he returned with a pair of mismatched socks, his leather jacket, and a hair tie, she motioned for him to turn around, put his back to her. He did so without question, taking the time to try and pull his boot on.

Her fingers combed through his hair with the familiarity of an old friend. His eyes fluttered closed, a quiet sigh threatening to break past his lips. She worked quickly, used to dealing with hair much, much longer than his, and suddenly, the world seemed so much brighter.

His hair sat in a small tail at the base of his neck. Her fingers patted stray hairs away, tucking his bangs back, behind his ears, and he heard her let out a small, satisfied hum. “Much better,” She said, and he could hear her smile. “Grab your hat too, though. And your gloves.”

“Cool down, ma,” He grunted, rolling his shoulders. 

She scoffed. The corners of his lips quirked in a smirk.

This was going to be a good day.

-

“Alright,” Strike slipped into the drivers seat of the car, shivering. Today was one of the coldest they had had so far, and her coat wasn’t nearly thick enough to keep her warm. “If you’re coming with me, you have to do what I say, when I say it. No questions. No fighting. No wiseass comments. Nothing.”

He nodded, silent. This wasn’t his first rodeo. If he took a wrong step, it could endanger the Railroad, or worse, it could put her in danger. The Asset fidgeted in the back of his mind. _The mission._

“There’s a woman we’re going to go see. Radio- one of our scouts- picked her up a couple of days ago from another outpost. Our job is to pick her up from the Exchange, take her to see Gab, get her new identification, and then get her to the airport for her flight at ten tonight.” She glanced at him as the car lurched, pulling out of her parking stall. “Questions?”

“You told me not to ask any questions,” He intoned.

She laughed, slapping her hands against the wheel. “Yeah, uh. I mean while we’re in the field. Ask whatever you want right now.”

“What’s her power?”

“Shapeshifting,” Strike made a face at the mention of the ability. “We think she might be an Inhuman- we don’t have much info on them other than the fact that their abilities become apparent after ingesting some sort of… I dunno. Gas?” She shrugged. “It’s weird.”

“Weirder than being born with them, or getting them at puberty?”

“Look bud,” She nudged his shoulder with her elbow, as if to chastise him. “It’s weird to me. Most of the folks we get were either born with it, experimented on, or grow into it later. I’m ignorant, so I declare it to be weird.”

He glanced down at her elbow. Since the incident the night before, she had been touching him far more frequently. Some sort of barrier had been broken down between them. He had decided that he didn’t mind it- some basic part of him _craved_ touch, actually, but he didn’t know how to respond. It seemed to end with her jostling him a lot and sneaking her cold feet under his calves when they were watching television the night before.

“Anyway,” She cleared her throat. “She can look like anything, human or animal. It’s… a tricky power.”

“Why?” 

Strike grimaced, nose wrinkling. “I don’t like dealing with people who have powers that can sometimes slip past me. I don’t screen people that I trust as frequently as I do people I don’t know. If she appeared as Gab, or Radio, or you-“

“Me?”

“Yeah,” She nodded. “I don’t peek into your mind, James, and I won’t. Not unless you want me to look for something.”

He could ask her. He could ask her right now. _Can you help me remember?_

Zola’s face surged forward, through his mind, uninvited. James grimaced.

“Thanks,” He said, and that was all he said.

“For sure. But it still leaves me at a disadvantage. If she is a Hydra agent, or a SHIELD agent, or a member of government, then she could be-“

“Ease up,” He said, and her shoulders sagged beside him. “We’ll deal with it when we get there.”

“Okay,” She replied, posture still limp, as if she didn’t really believe it.

-

They had made a quick stop before the Exchange after parking- James’ stomach had rumbled right when Strike had fumbled for some spare change to pay the meter, and she had looked at him with knowing eyes. She had bought him a hotdog, wrapped in tin foil, and a can of cola, his favorite. The sugar woke him, made him alert, maybe a little twitchy, enough that he noticed their target before Strike had.

‘Radio’, tall and dark, dressed in a smart suit and tie, stepped through the crowd like parting waves. James noticed his eyes flicker to him, a twitch to his expression- alarm, Strike always came alone, he assumed- and then slide away. He wasn’t the target, though. Just the contact.

The target walked at his side, and a distant, younger part of James wondered why he hadn’t noticed her first. The woman was nothing short of stunning, with long blonde hair and a smile that looked as if it had been peeled from a commercial. She walked as if she owned the Exchange, the man beside her, and when her gaze fell on James, a weaker man may have fallen at her feet.

He was the Winter Soldier, though. The Asset. The Asset wouldn’t notice how her top was tight, strained enough that it looked as if the buttons were about to bust right off. He didn’t notice the smatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose, or the pale pink of her lipstick. He did, however, notice when Strike reached out to grab his elbow, bunching her fingers in the leather of his jacket, her shoulders tensing. She didn’t speak- Radio and his companion were too close to actually voice her concern, but her lips settled into a thin, disconcerting line.

“Miss,” Radio began, his lips splitting into a wide smile. “Do you know the best way to the train station?”

“You could walk, but it’s about ten blocks,” She replied, finishing her side of the code.

“That’s fine. I could use the exercise.” Radio put his hand on the blonde’s shoulder, still smiling. “Busy day?”

“The busiest,” Strike replied dryly. “Let’s get going. I’m just parked a little while away.”

“Hold up,” The man glanced over at James, and his smile faded. James’ expression was settled into neutral, absolutely impassive. “Who’s this?”

“We don’t do introductions,” Strike said, and she _still_ hadn’t let go of his elbow. “He’s with me. That’s all you need to know.”

Radio looked between the two of them, settling his gaze back on James. Barnes raised one eyebrow, just a hair, almost as if he was challenging the other man. Once again, he won the staring contest as Radio looked back at Strike with a grumbling sigh. “Alright,” He acquiesced. “You drive safe.”

“Always.” But her eyes were on the woman. The blonde was glancing between the two of them, expression unsure even in her silence. 

Radio backed off, slipping back through the crowd, and then there were three.

“What’s your new name?” Strike asked, but there was none of the friendliness she had used when dealing with the kid from the month before. This was the cold, calculating Strike of the bar. This was the detached Strike that spoke on the phone, the business-like persona that took these sorts of jobs.

“Metis,” She replied, and her voice sounded like honey, smooth and rich.

“Sure, Metis,” Strike nodded. “I’m Strike. Let’s get you some identification.”

“Um,” The woman blinked slowly, batting long, thick lashes. “Who’s this?” She pointed at James with one perfectly manicured nail.

Strike glanced at him, and for a moment there was fear, flickering behind the grey of her eyes. Fear not for herself, but for him.

“Steve,” James replied, the name slipping off his tongue as he looked down at Strike. He glanced at Metis, his expression still carefully passive. 

Metis smiled, dazzlingly bright. “Strike and Steve,” She said, and put her hand over her mouth. “What a cute pair you two make. So grumpy!”

“Let’s just get to the car,” Strike grumbled, finally peeling away from his side, her fingers leaving his elbow. James watched her lead Metis to their parking spot- the woman was clearly shifted to be incredibly attractive, which was stupid enough for him to think that she wasn’t really a threat. People who were running away were usually trying to keep eyes _off_ of them, not fixated _on_ them.

Yet Strike walked stiffly, her back ramrod straight, and he _knew_ that he was missing something. Something that, perhaps, he couldn’t quite see.

-

“So, how long have you been doing this?” 

Metis had been given the front passenger seat. James had silently volunteered to take the backseat- not out of any sense of chivalry or kindness, but because he didn’t want to leave his back open to an unknown variable. She had used her position beside Strike to push for conversation- something that the dark haired woman didn’t seem to be even remotely interested in.

“Long enough,” Strike answered, and she glanced at James through the rearview mirror. “Stop asking questions.”

“But I wanna know-“

“No.” Strike spoke, and the woman lapsed into silence. “Asking questions gets people killed.”

He watched as Metis’ eyes flickered up to the mirror to look at him. James arranged his expression back into complete neutrality.

“What’s your power?” She asked, batting her eyelashes again.

“Stubborness,” He replied dryly, glancing out the window to his right. They weren’t too far from Gab’s apartment.

She giggled, flipping her hair over one shoulder. Even knowing that she was a shapeshifter, that it was all most likely an illusion, the act caught his eye. Something in the back of his mind twitched, _remembered_ -

_”Come dancing with me, Bucky!”_

_Her hair shone red-gold under the flickering street lights. She spun as she turned to face him, expression bright, teeth white, dress flaring out, blue and silver._

James blinked. The memory faded away as quickly as it had appeared, until he doubted that he had even remembered anything. When he looked back at the mirror, Strike was looking him dead in the eye, concern clear on her face. He wondered if she could tell when he remembered, if some sort of alarm triggered in her head.

She reached up and tugged at her scarf, wound thrice around her neck. It looked silly, overly bulky against the thin layer of her jacket, but it hid the blotchy red marks from where he had almost throttled her the night prior.

Guilt settled heavily in the pit of his gut.

“Here we are,” Strike muttered, turning in to the back alley behind Gab’s apartment. “Remember. No questions.”

“Okay, okay,” It was clear that Metis hadn’t really heard her, though, her attention firmly out the window beside her.

Gab was waiting outside, leaning on the back door of the building. She raised one brow when she saw the three of them, and kept it firmly raised when she recognized James.

“Sup,” She greeted, extending one hand to Metis. “I’m Gab. Ready to start your new life?”

The woman simply nodded, beaming. James distantly wondered if she _ever_ stopped smiling.

“Go on up without us,” Strike said, waving the two of them off. “I’ve gotta take a call.”

Gab glanced at her, her expression settling into something more serious. “Okay,” She spoke easily, casually. “Buzz up if you need to come in. We’ll be done in an hour or so, probably.”

Strike watched the two women close the door behind them, climbing the stairs to Gab’s apartment, and her expression changed quickly, almost savagely, into something between anger and disgust. 

James looked at her, long and steady, waiting for her to speak. When it was clear that she wasn’t about to unless he provoked her, he folded his arms. “Let me have it,” He drawled, leaning against the hood of her car.

“I can’t read her mind.”

She spoke quickly, her hands on her hips, turned away from him, but her voice shook. He blinked, unsure of the proper reaction to this sudden turn of events. “…What?”

“I can’t read Metis’ mind,” She said, and when she turned back to face him, her cheeks were flushed a bright red. “I’ve been trying the entire _fucking_ trip, and I can’t. At all. She’s entirely blank.”

“Cool down,” He said, raising his left hand, gloved palm out towards her. “Talk slowly. Has this happened before?”

“No,” She shook her head, then folded her arms. Dropped them. As if she didn’t know what exactly to do with them. “I can still feel Gab. I can still sense you. I could sense Radio, everyone in the Exchange-“ Strike’s voice dropped into a hiss. “James, I can tell you that a man in the left most basement suite is cooking up pot brownies right this instant, but it’s as if Metis doesn’t even exist.”

“Do you think she could be an agent?” Barnes left the affiliation conspicuously empty. Could be Hydra. Could be SHIELD. Could just be the government. Could be someone new. 

“I have no idea.” Strike looked up at him, through tufts of dark hair that had fallen loose from her braid. “Considering what we found in Thomas’ laptop, I had thought that if Hydra was going to make a move, then it would have already. If they know enough to try and infiltrate the Railroad, why don’t they just lead a strike team? Expose us?”

James shrugged. He didn’t understand half of Hydra’s reasoning, even after decades of answering to them. He had simply been a weapon during his time with them, pointed at a target and let loose. The ‘why’ of a mission had never been important to him. “Can’t you tell your contact? The guy you talk to on the phone?”

“Yeah, I’ll tell him, but-“ She ran her hands over her face and groaned loudly, muffled behind her palms. “There’s a little voice at the back of my head, just saying ‘Hey, Strike, maybe she’s just normal. Maybe you’re just losing it.’ Maybe she’s naturally resistant.”

“I doubt it,” James said dryly. “How long have you been doing this?”

“Years,” She admitted, her face still buried in her hands.

“And how many people have you met that you couldn’t read?”

“At all?” She peeked out, a sliver of grey between her parted fingers. “Two. And they had mental abilities keeping me from looking in.”

He spread his hands, as if to say _well there you have it_.

Strike dropped her hands to her pockets, fishing out her phone. “You’re right. I’ll call it in. Won’t sound the alarm quite yet, but I’ll at least let them know what they’re dealing with.”

James leaned against the hood of the car, nodding as she clicked away at buttons on her phone, and lifted it to her ear. He looked up at the window that led to Gab’s apartment suite, and waited.


	10. Cards

The two of them decided to stay in the parking lot for the full hour after Strike had made her call. She sat in the drivers seat with the car off, arms folded against the cold, as he sat shotgun beside her.

Strike filled the silence with stories. He had never heard her talk so much about herself that he found himself falling silent, nodding along with her stories.

She’d had a dog growing up. Some big mutt named Waldo, with big floppy ears and a poor sense of direction. Waldo had gotten out one night and had never come home. “And that’s why I don’t want a pet,” She finished with a decisive nod. “Going through that again might very well kill me.”

She had loved math when she was younger, science and history. She had wanted to become a ‘theoretical physicist’, she had said, her expression wistful. Not that young Strike had known what that had meant, but she had wanted it. “My parents had thought it was charming. Now that I’m an adult, I wonder if I was just really stupid.”

Her best friend had been a boy named Todd. He’d been the only other kid her age when her parents had joined Hydra, a boy with powers of his own. “Still wonder what happened to him,” She murmured, her words trailing off.”

“You don’t know?”

“Nope,” She said, and sighed. “I make it a policy not to poke the sleeping bear. The less I know about Hydra personnel, the better.”

He watched her as she rubbed her hands together, warming them between her knees. 

“There was a boy,” He spoke slowly, and she paused for a half-second, looking over at him as he continued on. “A man.”

“A friend?” She asked.

He swallowed. “Yeah.” The words tasted like honesty on his tongue- he could picture his face as easily as he could picture Strike’s, now. Sandy brown hair, blue eyes, an easy smile. He had been scrawny, nearly a whole head shorter than Barnes. He could see the boy like a snapshot, a grainy film picture of the past.

“What was his name?”

“Steve.” The name came unbidden to his lips, twisting in a wry grin. The image changed, in his mind, morphed. Taller. Wider. _I’m with you till the end of the line._ Something in his gut flopped over, leaving him feeling off-balance and queasy. “He was always a punk.”

Strike grinned beside him. “Best friends always are,” She whispered.

“Always getting himself into trouble, too,” He kept going, the words spilling from his lips. Like they had been waiting to be drawn on all these years. “Used to get into all sorts of fights- always had to go bail him out when he got too fucked up to fight back.”

“Sounds like a hero.”

He glanced at Strike, then ran a hand over his hair. He had almost forgotten that she had tied it back, now that he wasn’t pushing it out of his eyes every few minutes. “Yeah,” He admitted. “He always wanted that. To be that. Not for the fame, or the glory, but he-“ He felt like he was choking. “He was born for it. To help people.”

“Why don’t you go find him?” She asked, her voice soft and kind. He held her gaze for a long moment- and this time, he was the one who looked away.

“I can’t.” He mumbled. “I did- I did a lot of bad stuff. Things I regret. Things that he- He wouldn’t really understand.” Words went unspoken, racing through the back of his mind. He had killed people, tortured others. Innocent people had lost their lives because they were between him and his target. Whatever Hydra had made him, whatever they had done to him, he was still human. Still capable of making his own decisions. He should have fought harder. He should have chosen death over an existence of murder.

The pressure sensors in his metal hand went off as Strike slipped her hand into his, and squeezed.

“I think you’re selling your friend short.” She murmured, curling her fingers protectively around his own. 

He took a deep breath of the biting winter air, and dipped his chin in a faint nod. Even if he didn’t believe it, she seemed to, and maybe that was enough for now. 

They sat there for somewhere around the space of a few minutes, until the door to the building opened and Gab walked out, Metis practically bouncing behind her, holding a manilla envelope filled with newly made identification close to her chest. Strike slipped her hand from his after one quick squeeze, slipping out of the drivers seat and leaning against the open door.

“All done?” Strike called out across the lot.

“Yep!” Metis grinned, wide and bright. “This is so cool!”

James fought the urge to roll his eyes at her excitement as he stepped out of the front seat, moving to the backseat once again. The only thing that stopped him from being entirely sure that she was a Hydra agent was her obvious cluelessness of the entire situation.

“Did you two need anything before you head out?” Gab looked between the two of them, pursing her lips. “It’s pretty cold out. I’ve got some coffee made upstairs.”

“No,” He spoke before Strike could, and he caught the motion of her turning to look at him out of the corner of his eye. “We need to get going.”

“Alrighty,” She said, shrugging. “You two drive safe.”

“Always do.” Strike patted the top of the car with the flat of her hand. “Let’s get going.”

“Oh, uh,” Gab motioned towards her neck, and cleared her throat. “You got a lil’ something. There.”

Without a second glance, Strike pulled her scarf back up, and wordlessly slipped back into the car. Gab looked back at James, gave him a long, displeased look, and then turned, walking back into her building.

He slid into the backseat last, buckling in behind Metis who was already chattering.

“What is that?” She asked, and she reached out, tugging at the edge of Strike’s scarf. As if shooing away a toddler, the dark-haired woman batted her hands away before turning the key in the ignition, annoyance clear on her face. 

“None of your business.”

“Did you get into a fight?”

“Still none of your business.”

“Do you get into fights often?”

“ **Stop asking questions!** ”

Strike’s voice rang through the car, and Metis fell into a sudden, welcome silence. Strike gripped the wheel with white-knuckled hands, eyes gazing sightlessly out, at the parkade before them. James watched her through the rear-view mirror, the thin line of her lips, the hard granite of her eyes. He had rarely heard her raise her voice before- once to mollify Gab, back at the Taphouse. Once now, with this woman who had no concept of real danger.

“I’m taking you to the airport,” Strike spoke quickly, concisely as she backed out of the parking stall. “From there, you will board a plane. Gab gave you your tickets, correct?”

“Yes,” Metis said, her voice sounding… small. Hushed. James glanced at her and blinked- her once golden hair had dulled to a near-brown.

“Good,” She nodded. “And that will be that. You don’t get to ask me about anything personal, you get it?”

“Okay.”

“Good.”

And with that, Strike turned the radio up so loud, James’ own thoughts were nearly drowned out by the twang of country guitar and off-key wailings about love and trucks.

-

In complete silence but for the radio, Strike rolled up to the drop-off zone and unlocked the car door for Metis. The shapeshifter looked at her, a hurt expression on her pretty, heart-shaped face.

After a long moment of contemplation, Strike opened her mouth. “Have a safe flight,” She said, and then looked the woman in the eye. “And don’t ask your next contact any more questions.”

“I won’t,” Metis murmured, and cracked the car door open. “You, um,” She fidgeted with the hem of her shirt as she tried to find the right words. “Don’t get hurt.”

Something in Strike’s eyes softened, and she nodded. “Thanks.”

The car door closed with a bang, and Strike nodded at the passenger seat. “You going to come sit up here, or are you good back there?”

“I’m good,” He murmured, stretching his legs into the seat next to him in an attempt to get comfortable. “Hungry.”

“Yeah,” She nodded, driving out of the drop off zone. “Let’s go home. Order in some takeout. What’s your opinion on Chinese?”

“The food, or the people?” 

She chuckled, the stress of the day slowly leaving her. “The food.”

“Sounds good to me.” Honestly, though, he would eat just about anything.

“Want to watch a movie tonight?”

They had finished Star Wars long ago, which had led into Indiana Jones. That had led to a week where they had a marathon run of three different television shows, and between that and their run of television the night before, Barnes needed a break. “Let’s not.”

“Okay,” She nodded, glancing into the mirror to look at him. “Cards?”

“Sure.” Cards. He could play cards. 

-

He didn’t remember how to play cards.

It was frustrating. Some part of him remembered, but everything he _did_ remember was foggy, mixed up with other rules. He didn’t know how many cards to draw, or how many to play. Was he supposed to keep them in order? Was a nine of spades better than a ten of diamonds? The five cards in his hand were somehow daunting.

They sat on the floor, on opposite sides of the coffee table. Strike had wrapped the knit blanket that was usually thrown over the back of the couch, around her shoulders. The table was a mess, covered in Styrofoam boxes that were filled with a colorful array of takeout. Even after eating at least four bowls, James was still hungry, slowly picking his way through his fifth helping of sweet n’ sour pork.

“Okay, so all you have to do is play a card with the same number or suit,” She explained, flipping the top card over, face-up. “Until you run out of cards. If you can’t play a card, you have to pick up.”

“That easy?” He asked, feeling like he was missing something.

“That easy.” Strike smiled, almost like she was indulging him. He felt like an idiot. “And if you have multiples of the same card, like four sixes, you can play them all at once. Oh, and if you play an eight, you can pick the suit.”

That made things a little more complicated. The top card stared up at him- a four of clubs. He swallowed, looking down at his hand. Somehow, this seemed more difficult than following Strike on one of her jobs, or tracking down a Hydra agent. 

“Mind if I put on some music?”

He glanced up at her, over his hand of cards. “Sure.”

She flipped her phone screen-side up, and began flipping through, clicking on the pop-ups. Tentatively, he put down a four of spades and waited to see if he had made an incorrect move.

If he had, she didn’t say anything about it. She pulled a ten of spades and placed it face up, then tapped something on her phone. 

Music began playing- the loud rumble of an electric guitar, the thrum of building drums, the deep growl of a masculine voice. 

Barnes played his nine of spades and waited, watching her phone as if it would give some sort of context to the music.

“This is one of my favorite songs,” She said, the corner of her mouth twitched in a small smile as she put her next card down. 

He snorted, then looked at his hand and realized that he didn’t have anything that could match. Scowling, he drew a card. “Didn’t expect that,” He mumbled.

“What?” She raised one brow, pressing her lips together. “Didn’t think I’d like rock music?”

“Nope.” 

She put down a three of hearts, leaving her with only two cards in her hand. Barnes didn’t like the way this game was going. “Ouch,” She murmured, but her lips faded into a smile. “Well then, pal. You get to pick the next one.”

He looked flatly at her before putting a three of clubs down. “… I don’t know any music.”

“Nonsense,” She said, drawing another card. “You’ve got the rest of this song to try and figure something out, or you have to keep on listening to my music.”

He wrinkled his nose and reached for her phone.

“Just tap on the- yeah, there,” She reached over the table, her hand hovering over his own. “And just type in the name of the song you want.”

“… This screen is tiny.” He muttered. “And my hand-“

“You’ll have to just type with your right hand, yeah,” Strike looked up at him from where she was positioned over the table, propped up on her elbows in front of him. “It just takes some practice to get used to it.”

James looked back down at the screen, and thought. He couldn’t remember any names of songs, or artists, words to any of his songs-

_Her hair shone red-gold in the spotlight as she spun, curls bouncing. She bumped her hip against his, bopping to the music._

_She laughed. It sounded like bells in the halls of his memory._

_He kissed her under the spinning lights of the dance floor, lifting her into his arms. She was warm. Soft under his hands, the curve of her waist where her dress flared out into a blue wave._

James opened his eyes and plugged the name ‘Benny Goodman’ into the phone, his movements slow and exaggerated with only the one hand.

The sound of big horns swelled into the room, and James put the phone down onto the table slowly, carefully, as if it would break if he wasn’t gentle. His eyes stayed on the screen for a long time after, his cards forgotten on the table. He could feel Strike’s eyes on him, watching, still leaned up and onto the table on her elbows as if she were challenging him to push her away.

“I used to go dancing,” He whispered, his words almost lost behind the music. “Go out, jitterbug at the clubs.” Unconsciously, his lips twitched into a smile, remembering for a moment. The lights. The sound. The laughter of a girl. _His_ girl. “Used to drag Steve out with me. Man, we-“ His lips spread wider, until he was grinning. White against the memories. “We had the best times.”

“I can’t imagine you dancing.” 

When he looked at her, actually _looked_ at her, the gentle smile on her lips, the brightness to her grey eyes, he felt something in his mind fall away. His chest felt… lighter. “All the time. We didn’t have the money to go out and do a lot else, but there was this place- a quarter would get’cha a pint, and they played music ‘till one in the morning.” 

“Chrissakes,” She sighed. “I wish I could get a drink for a quarter now.”

James snorted. “Yeah, well, I was getting paid a quarter an hour for backbreaking work, so count your lucky stars.”

“I keep forgetting that you’re practically a fossil,” 

The jibe left him grinning. This felt _normal_. Just sitting around, shooting the shit. Giving each other hell. “You know, back in my day-“

“Don’t even start-“

“We didn’t have any of these-“ He picked up her phone from where he had so carefully set it down on the table and waved it between them, warping the music where it was cupped against his palm. “-cellular devices.”

“Did you communicate through telegram?”

“Smoke signals, actually.”

“I’m surprised you’re handling the transition so well.”

“Yeah, well,” He shrugged, “Internet’s nice.”

Her eyes widened before she laughed, as if she hadn’t expected how casually he had joked with her. She leaned back, flattening her left hand on the table, her laughter infectious enough that he was left chuckling in return.

“Have to say,” She cleared her throat, her smile still faint on her lips as she leaned back in her seat. “I _still_ can’t imagine you dancing.”

He leaned onto the table, putting his weight on his forearms. “To be fair,” He spoke, his voice low and dark. A grin, wickedly teasing, touched his lips, and he looked at her through the dark curtain of his bangs. “There’s a lot about me that you don’t know.”

“Oh?” She raised one dark brow, her expression curious as she leaned back in, mirroring his pose. “Educate me.”

“Well,” He reached out, fiddling with the stack of cards between them, but his gaze stayed steady. “My favorite color is green. I like dogs more than I like cats. And I have a fondness for dark-haired women.”

Strike licked her lips before she spoke, a tic that she used to buy a second or two of time before she was expected to reply. “I bet you used that line on all the girls you took dancing, Barnes.”

“I’d rather take you dancing.”

He didn’t imagine the way her lips parted, or the faint pink tint to her cheeks that rose the instant he spoke. He had thrown her so off-guard with just a few simple words- just like the Bucky Barnes from so many years ago.

“James-“

The knock on the front door jerked the two of them out of their reverie, as they both snapped back on their haunches. Strike was blushing fully, now, though he wasn’t sure if it was from his flirtations, or her potential embarrassment.

She cleared her throat and drew herself to her feet. “I’ll, uh- I’ll go grab that.” She said, then sharply turned on one heel, heading for the door.

Slowly, James drew both hands up, and planted his face firmly into his palms. 

Why had he said that? No, that wasn’t the right question. He had said that because he had _wanted_ to flirt with her. He had wanted to flatter her, to fall back to habits he hadn’t used since- 

How had he said that? How had he known exactly what to say? The Winter Soldier had had no need for words, other than to deliver mission statements and voice directions. The Asset wouldn’t have known what to say, how to infer, to lean towards her. 

Bucky Barnes had known. Somewhere distant, beyond memories, beyond blurry images from the past, James Buchanan Barnes had twisted his lips into a smirk and flirted with the first girl he hadn’t either killed, tried to kill, or received orders from in, well. Decades. 

Despite his confusion, despite his embarrassment, Bucky was smiling behind his hands.

The voices at the front door drifted through the apartment building-

“What happened with the Incident was terrible,” A male voice floated through the halls. “Did you know that the Bible has answers for-“

Strike didn’t say anything- just let out a long, deeply-suffering sigh that lasted a solid ten seconds before shutting the door. Bucky heard the _click_ of the lock and the of the deadbolt, and pulled his face out of his hands to look up at her from his seat. Her phone was still playing music- something less familiar to him, but with the same big horns and deep drums. 

“Let’s try that game again,” He spoke as she opened her mouth, cutting her off before she could speak. He could explore the potential of attraction later. For now, he would take this feeling and store it away- the laughter, the blushed cheeks, the twist to his lips- and simply enjoy this night for what it was. “I think I’ve got the hang of it now.”

She paused, then smiled at him as she took her seat, shuffling the cards in her nimble fingers. “This time, we play for keeps, Barnes.”

“Challenge accepted.”


End file.
